Time
by Elementary Magpie
Summary: What decisions do you make when time is running out? [MirokuKagome]
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Inuyasha and neither intend nor expect any profit from this work other than the pleasure of writing and sharing it.

**Summary**: What decisions do you make when time is running out? Angst/Romance. Miroku/Kagome. Rated for language and mature themes.

**Author's Note**: This story is posting in parts, but the entire thing is already written out in rough. I'll be posting the chapters as I find time to get each of them polished.

**Time**

by Elementary Magpie

**Chapter 1**

Later, he thought, it had been too obvious. How many times was Naraku going to try that old divide-and-conquer trick before he realized that it wouldn't work? Just often enough until it did, as it turned out. He should have guessed.

They were such simple diversions. Kikyo's soul catchers, floating north, and Inuyasha was gone, return date unspecified. A verbal message passed from pilgrim to peddler to farmer to him: Mushin had fallen sick, and needed the aid of his old student.

And that, Miroku realized just too late, was where he should have suspected something was wrong. Because when would Mushin ever, ever think of him when he wasn't directly in his line of sight? When _had_ he ever? But it felt so damn good to be … _wanted_, so Miroku left, copping a farewell feel on Sango's luscious behind and grinning cheerfully at Kagome's copious medical instructions as he started out. They would be fine without Inuyasha, without him. They always were, in the village.

And it was only as he climbed the final slope to the shrine, crater-pocked clearing just coming into view through the trees, that doubt began to claw its way through his sense of security. It was only as he climbed the temple steps with a puzzled and healthy Mushin emerging from the door above that he began to understand. Before he began to remember, as he should have, miles ago, hours. That Naraku hated women, but he also loved them. So the girls and the old priestess could go quickly. Men he just hated. For men he held grudges. So, Kikyo bribed somehow to continue her ongoing dance with the hanyou, and an inebriated peddler met with a shape-shifted golem and sent monk-ward. Because in the end, Inuyasha and Miroku were the ones who had to suffer.

And when that cold knowledge finally slid to the front of his mind, he stopped in the middle of the temple stairs, and turned, and ran, Mushin forgotten. Ran, trying not to be too late, hoping not to be too late. Ran the far too many miles until his body's pain became an agony indistinguishable from grief, knowing that there wouldn't be quite enough time. Because this was Naraku, who liked the dramatic irony of Just Too Late.

Which was also the demon's mistake, just a little bit. Because he didn't send the tree crashing down into Kaede's hut until Miroku crested the hill just above town. He made sure that Miroku was just close enough to watch as the building shattered and collapsed from the impact, just close enough to arrive gasping in the village before the dust clouds even had time to settle on the ruin.

As Miroku sank to his knees just too late before the pile of shattered wood and thatch that had become home, the villagers came to him, crying that Lady Kaede had been inside with the demon slayer and the demon child and the strange foreign girl. And suddenly he refused, he fucking _refused _to let Naraku win. "Dig them out!" he cried to the gawkers, crawling to the ruin and beginning to drag away bits of rubble. Because no. _No_. They could not be gone. No one else.

So he dug, hands bare and bleeding, skin and glove alike shredding on the splinters, but he didn't dare use the kazaana for fear of pulling the women in with the rubble. And so it was his bare hand that grabbed Sango's bare hand and felt it already growing cold. And as he shifted pieces of Kaede's cottage off of her broken body and checked for a pulse he already knew he wouldn't find, that cold spread from her hand to his heart. _I won't cry._ Because he had never cried, not since that very first day when the kazaana had taken his father. And he didn't cry as he and the villagers in turn uncovered Kaede and the little fox demon, crushed and scalded together by the remains of the fire. Lover, mother, son, in a different karma. And he didn't cry because in the end this was just another repetition of the kazaana's very first lesson: Alone. And he should have _known_.

But he kept digging, because not everyone was accounted for, and in the end the only way to rise above reality is to _know _it first. He kept digging, so busy not crying that it took him a moment or two to realize when he found her that Kagome was _warm_. Kagome was still alive. Just barely, and not for long. Even as he tore his outer robe to make bandages to staunch the blood pouring from those terrible wounds in her side, he knew they were beyond his power to heal. But suddenly there was more that he could do than dig, and not cry. Because Kagome was _alive_, and as long as she was alive, there was something saved in the balance. As long as she was alive, there was a future. As long as she was alive, Naraku hadn't won.

He could never heal these injuries, but maybe he could take her to someone who could. He remembered the amazing remedies that Kagome had brought back from her own time, and the wonder tales she told of "modern medicine." If he could get her to the Well, Miroku thought, get her _through _the Well to her own time, perhaps there she could be saved. With a determined stagger, he gathered her in his arms and stood, turning towards the forest path.

And stopped, dry eyes frozen on Sango's body being laid out by the villagers next to those of Kaede and Shippo. Because this was Naraku. Naraku, who had resurrected Kohaku in order to torment Sango. Miroku couldn't leave Sango to that. _Knew_ she would ask him … it felt like a promise he had already made to her. But Kagome was still bleeding, bleeding, and when the blood all ran out Naraku would have taken them all and Miroku couldn't….

Frantic, he laid Kagome down and ran to his fiancé's body, pulling out ofuda as he ran. Skidding to his knees to chant prayers, he stuffed the protective charms into her mouth, her nostrils, twined them in her stiffening fingers. Repeated the procedure with Shippo and Kaede, and stood, looking again for Kagome. It had to be enough. Please. Because Kagome was still bleeding and he had to go.

"Honored Monk," asked an aged farmer from where he'd knelt weeping next to the feet of the old miko Miroku knew he had been sweet on for decades. "What are you doing to our Lady Priestess?'

"Burn them," he screamed, frantic. "Burn them now just as I've prepared their bodies and then bury them with these charms." He thrust more ofuda into the gaping man's hands and repeated, "Burn them with the charms! If you don't do this they will rise as demons and haunt you!" Not quite a lie. And he turned away, snatching up Kagome and beginning to run towards the forest. _Please_.

"Where are you going? Where is Inuyasha?" called another villager.

"Taking Lady Kagome to the Bone Eater's Well. Tell Inuyasha when he returns that I took her through it," he shouted over his shoulder, trying not to stumble as he ran. Kagome was too limp a weight in his arms to get a good hold on, and awkward for her small size, all dangling legs. Perhaps Inuyasha would return in time to meet them on the path and take over the carrying faster than his body had left in it to go. _Please_.

What met them a quarter of the way along the path to the Bone Eater's Well was not Inuyasha.

Mantis demons. Three.

Naraku was not done yet.

_Put her down monk_, soothed a deep voice on the rising wind. _Put her down and you may leave to live another day_.

But it didn't matter, because he was not letting Naraku have Kagome too. Not. Living another day was irrelevant. Screaming wordless defiance into the wind he knelt, propping Kagome against his left shoulder so that he could release the beads and loose the kazaana.

They hurt going down, the mantis demons did, but eventually they all vanished into his personal abyss and he pulled the beads tight around his palm. It hurt, but Kagome was still breathing, and there was enough left in him to pick her up and keep running.

Until another mantis triumvirate rounded the path in front of them. And another after that. Eventually he lost count, because he wasn't really paying attention. After each little battle his hand hurt worse than before, but he wasn't really paying attention. The capacity of his brain had shrunk to getting Kagome to the well before she bled out of time. To cursing Inuyasha for corpse-hunting when the living girl who adored him needed his superhuman strength and speed. To keeping his own exhausted human body moving forward, step by step, to battling Inuyasha's girl the last few yards to the Well.

By the time he got there, his hand was throbbing worse than a head wound from Hiraikotsu when Sango's proprieties were offended. _No. Don't think about Sango_. So he didn't pay attention, because they had made it to the Well, and Kagome could go home to her healers at last.

Miroku paused at the edge. How was he to get Kagome through it? Just throw her in? She still had the shards around her neck, but what if magic didn't work when she was unconscious? She would land hard enough on the well floor to kill her in this condition. He knew that from experience, having surreptitiously tried the well's powers out of curiosity one evening when everyone was elsewhere. For the same reason, he knew that he couldn't take her through himself. Perhaps if he jumped in with her in his arms, the magic would get enough of a boost to push her to her own time, leaving him behind. Then he could climb back out of the well and wait for Inuyasha to let him know where she was, return to the village to bury Sango, Kaede, and Shippo as safely as possible. Yes.

But wait, hadn't Kagome said that the well in her time was encased in some sort of building? What if her people didn't see that she had returned? She would bleed to death at the bottom of the well and it all would have been futile. Perhaps…yes: the dramatic effects he had been experimenting with last year. He quickly pulled out another ofuda and tucked it into the neck of Kagome's blouse, muttering prayers as he did so. If this worked, her arrival in her own time would be accompanied by a shower of fire and a burst of sound that could be heard even through the walls of a well house.

It was the best he could do. Behind him the wind was rising again with the arrival of some new creature of Naraku's. Time enough to deal with them when she was safe on the other side. Gathering Kagome more securely in his arms, he jumped.

And landed on the well floor, Kagome still in his arms. But even as he tried to quell his panic that the escape route hadn't worked, he became conscious of a change of light, a change of smell…. His ofuda exploded deafeningly in his ear, flashing upwards to reveal smooth stone walls, adorned not with the familiar ivy but instead with a rope ladder ascending up to the well mouth. Above, the sunset sky had been replaced by a shadowy paneled ceiling.

The well had brought them through to her time. Both of them. And Kagome was still alive. Cradling her more securely against one shoulder, Miroku reached out, grabbed the rope, and began to climb.


	2. Chapter 2

**Time**

**By Elementary Magpie**

**Disclaimer**: Still not mine. Still not for profit.

**Author's Note:** Many thanks to all of you who wrote encouraging reviews! Sorry about the wait. This chapter and the next one have been giving me the most trouble with pacing and tone and so forth. Later ones need less editing, so they should come along faster after Chapter 3 is up. There are 10 chapters in all.

**Another Author's Note**: In this section, you'll begin to notice that I really, really don't speak Japanese. Meaning that, if I tried to use all of the proper honorifics for all of the different relationships in this story, the errors would be pretty damn hilarious at all of the wrong moments. So, instead, I'm following the style set by the English translators of the manga and the anime, which is to add titles to names (Lady, Sir) at crucial points, but otherwise go with honorific-free modern English usage. Trust me: it's better this way.

**Chapter 2**

The climb out of the well was taking too much time, the rope ladder twisting back and forth, his one free hand slipping on the rungs with sweat and blood. With every upward grab for the next rung, Miroku had to let go of the ladder and wedge his shoulder and head against the wall in order to keep Kagome's not-dead-please weight from pulling them back down to the bottom. After the initial flare of his ofuda, it was too dark, but as he struggled upward, Miroku began to be aware of a flickering light growing high above on the shadowed ceiling. Of the smell of smoke, and old wood burning. His charm had set the well house on fire. Then he had to climb faster, but he couldn't climb faster and Kagome was too limp in his arms...

The voices above were the compassion of Buddha.

An old man, quavering: "What could be causing that smoke?"

A boy, high-pitched shriek: "Look grandpa! Fire on the ceiling!"

_Please_.

"Help" cried Miroku. "Here in the well"

Faces appeared over edge of the well. "Who are you, young man?" asked an old man, peering down at them.

"Kagome!" cried the keener-sighted boy.

The old man cried out as he too noticed the girl on Miroku's shoulder. "What have you done with my granddaughter?"

"I am Miroku, one of Kagome's traveling companions," he gasped, urgent. "Kagome has been badly injured. Please call your healers!"

Then the man and boy were reaching down, Kagome lifted from his back. Out of the well, but still not safe, as the smoke became thicker and the fire's crackle deepened to a roar. As he pulled himself over the lip of the well, Miroku saw that the man and boy were too slow, struggling with Kagome's limp body. And the fire was too fast, so he pulled her into his arms, and ran through the smoke, ran up the steps, ran towards the rectangle of clear sunlight above.

Outside, the open light and whirling space drove him to his knees, uncertain. The air smelled like burning metal and the setting sun made Kagome's blood glow, and underneath everything there was a dull roaring that might or might not have been sound of his own laboring veins.

The boy, following close, paled at the sight of his sister's blood, squeaked "I'll call an ambulance," and set off at a run.

The old man was wailing and beating his fists against Miroku's back. "What have you done to our Kagome?"

"I didn't ... Naraku collapsed a hut on top of her. I found her…. She needs help now!" What was an "ambulance"? What should he do now? The old man kept trying to take Kagome out of Miroku's arms, but the monk held on, uncertain, trying to find a comprehensible landmark in the unfamiliar space.

Running footsteps and a woman's cry, "Kagome! What have you done to her?" Kagome's mother? Again the same accusations, the same denials, the same attempts to pull Kagome away, but Miroku held on, afraid to let her go too soon.

After a confused eternity, everything changed, very quickly. A wailing sound, heavy footsteps coming up stairs, and then he was surrounded by men and women in odd white livery who were talking to him authoritatively, telling him to put her down, let them get to work on the girl. As he stumbled back at last, they clustered around her with strange instruments, talking to one another in quick bursts of unfamiliar words, all in that odd accent that Kagome also had. He looked around, dizzy, to see the woman and the old man talking to other white-clad men, gesturing to the burning well house, explaining her condition in half truths: "…a fire…roof fell in…"

More liveried people were asking him irrelevant questions. Are you hurt? Do you need assistance? No. No. Please help Kagome. He was confused by their concern, until he remembered the blood and the dirt on his clothes. The wailing sound kept getting louder.

When he turned back to Kagome, they were gently picking her up on some sort of stretcher. They were carrying her down the shrine steps as more white-uniformed men streamed upwards, dragging snakelike things that spit water onto the burning well house. They were carrying her down the steps and into something that looked like a giant white lacquered box with fat black wheels. With a shriek and a roar, the box-thing sped away down the road, wailing, with Kagome inside. Miroku stood swaying on the steps, a little above where Kagome's family had clustered at the bottom with the fire-fighting people. What had happened? Was she still alive?

Then Kagome's family was climbing into another one of the lacquer carriages, beckoning him to follow them. The moment he collapsed into the seat next to the boy someone slammed the door shut and the thing accelerated with a jolt and a roar, hurling along in the same direction Kagome's box had gone.

It was confusing, sitting still after so very long, and still so unsure if he had done the right thing. The strange journey to the "hospital" that followed didn't quite make sense: enormous shining buildings passing by lighting-fast, hundreds of people, flashing lights, and constant loud roars and shrieks as more of these strange carriages dodged one another at breakneck speed. He thought later that it might have been fascinating if he'd been less worried, or less tired. But just then it all barely had time to register on his exhausted mind before they were stopping in a curved white colonnade in front of one of those shining buildings.

He followed the Higurashi family through an extraordinary glass door into a wide, low room that was somehow both bustling and calm. While Mrs. Higurashi was asking after Kagome to a white-clad man behind a counter, a similarly dressed woman came up to Miroku and asked him how he was injured. Before he could reply, the boy and his grandfather converged, babbling explanations to the official and pulling the monk with them towards the counter.

Mrs. Higurashi turned around with a distracted air. "They are taking her to the operating room," she told them, incomprehensibly. "I have to sign some release forms, and then we should go to the surgery waiting room on the third floor." Her eyes focused on Miroku and she frowned. "Souta," she said to the boy. "Please find somewhere for our…guest…to clean up and then meet Grandpa and me in the waiting room when he's done."

Souta gave a self-conscious nod, and tried to lead him across the room as Mrs. Higurashi and the shrine keeper hurried away in the opposite direction.

Miroku balked. "What have they done with Kagome?" he asked. "I need to see-"

The boy's answer made no more sense than Mrs. Higurashi's had. "It's OK. They are going to operate - to sew up her wounds. We can't go with them because it has to be sterile. When they sew her up, and for the antibiotics, and they have everything they need to do a blood transfusion if that's necessary, and -"

Souta was babbling, afraid. As if to convince himself more than Miroku. An old habit, _keep them calm_, asserted itself, and Miroku stopped arguing.

Bursting with nervous importance, Souta led Miroku back through the reception room, looking around anxiously at every sign posted on the walls and doors.

"Hey! Stop hitting me! What did _I_ do?" The high-pitched childish voice stopped Miroku in his tracks, whirled him around.

"Shippo?" Here? How-? No. The crying came from a black-haired, tailless, human child, fighting not with a white-maned half-demon but with his equally black-haired human brother.

After a moment, Miroku realized that someone was tugging on his sleeve. Souta. "Sir? Are you all right?"

Miroku stared at him. Forced himself to smile reassuringly. "Perfectly fine," he lied. "Please forgive my distraction. I will follow faithfully from now on."

"Oh," said Souta. "OK. The men's room is right here."

The boy led Miroku through a swinging wooden door into a small tile-covered room. There were two metal booths along one wall, and a series of porcelain basins, some waist-height, some lower, along two others. The waist-height basins were clearly for washing; Miroku looked around for a source of water. Souta watched him in confusion for a moment and then said, "Oh! You don't know modern plumbing, do you?"

"I fear not," Miroku replied, wondering why any of this was important. "Should I?"

"Oh, well," Souta said, adopting an authoritative gravity almost out of keeping with his small frame, "Here's the sink. You get water by turning these knobs, the red one for hot, the blue one for cold. And the soap's here…"

Souta continued to point out features of the room like the "urinal" and the "toilet" while

Miroku pulled off his blood-soaked, dirt-encrusted outer robe. After folding it neatly out of the way, Miroku leaned over the sink and began to rinse the blood off of his hands and glove and the cuffs of his blue under-robe. He rested his forehead on the mirror over the sink and watched the blood from his hands run down the drain. He noticed that the kazaana hurt, a great deal. He wondered what was happening to Kagome. Sewing her up? It hurt to think of so determinedly unique a girl as Kagome reduced to just another object of a tailor's craft.

"Wow, you have a lot of scratches," remarked Souta, looking at him with an uneasy frown. "You should get a doctor to look at them. And why try to clean that ragged glove thing on your hand? The other one is gone anyway. Best just to take it off entirely or someone around here will think it is unhygienic."

"I can't remove the glove or the beads," said Miroku, straightening back up and wondering what 'unhygienic' meant. "They keep my wind tunnel safely closed."

"Wind tunnel? What's that?"

So Kagome had never mentioned his curse to her family. "It is an abyss, a, a - Kagome called it a 'black hole' - in my hand, placed there by a demon's curse. If I didn't seal it, it would suck in everything around us."

Shouldn't they be checking on Kagome's progress now?

"Cool," said Souta. "But I can see how that would be inconvenient. Well, I guess you should just sort of keep you hand out of sight in your sleeve, just in case."

When Miroku was as clean as he could reasonably manage without a full bath, Souta led him back through the reception room, into a tiny cabinet that lurched and shuddered and then opened back up to deposit them in a completely different shining hallway. Dazed, he followed Souta into a room full of high-backed stools and worried looking people who included Mrs. Higurashi and her father-in-law. "It's a waiting room" explained Souta, who seemed to have appointed himself unofficial interpreter to Miroku. "This is where we wait while the doctors operate on Kagome."

Then they sat.

And waited.

When the silence grew too long, Mrs. Higurashi bravely tried to do the polite thing. "Have you been traveling with Kagome and Inuyasha for very long, Sir?"

"Some months now, Mrs. Higurashi." Apparently, Kagome hadn't mentioned _him_ to her family either. But-

"Oh! You must be the monk Kagome brings the soda for."

He blinked, astonished that Mrs. Higurashi should know such a thing. It was, as it turned out, almost the only thing she knew about him. And he didn't understand why that hurt. So in defense he kept his answers polite, noncommittal. No, he had not known Inuyasha before Kagome came. Yes, a Buddhist. No, just a monk. Yes, for years. No, no family left.

Then they asked him about Inuyasha and their other companions, whose names Mrs. Higurashi all seemed to know quite well. That hurt too, but he told them calmly enough that he didn't know where Inuyasha was and that the others had died in the collapse that had injured Kagome.

Mrs. Higurashi was genuinely horrified and grieved to hear about their deaths. He thanked her politely, wondering if he was ever again going to feel even slightly as if circumstances were under his control.

The introductory conversation concluded, silence crept over their corner of the "waiting room."

Miroku shifted in his seat. The strange, high-backed stools were hurting his spine. But no one seemed to be sitting on the shining floor in this place. A humming sound seemed to come out of the very walls. The air smelled strange, a little like lightening. He looked at the dirt under his fingernails. Harder to get out than blood. Please don't let Sango become another Kikyo. Please let Kagome be all right. He shook his head sharply and looked up around the room.

A girl in a hospital uniform paused outside the door, flirting with a co-worker. The tilt of her head, the set of her shoulders, the way the bangs fell, just that curve of her cheek - it could have been Sango. Would she hit as hard as Sango, if he put his hand…? His mind shifted, habitual, lovingly, to the detailed plans he'd been making for the night he'd finally get to unwrap that green kimono, peel back those black leggings, find out how far down those blushes really spread…

The girl giggled, high-pitched, not Sango, and he was back in the hospital waiting room, eyes full, hands trembling, cold.

_Not now_. He blinked, took in a deep breath, and sat up straighter on his odd "chair." Letting out the breath, he looked around determinedly.

His desperate gaze landed on Kagome's family. Now that his responsibility for guiding Miroku was completed, Souta sat rigidly still, pale and tense, looking fearfully at the waiting room door. Grandfather Higurashi, on the other hand, sagged weakly in his chair, mumbling prayers. Mrs. Higurashi was looking at both of them with worry in her eyes. Old habit took hold again; Miroku cleared his throat and asked the boy to explain how the "modern plumbing" worked in the men's room.

Souta perked up, launched into a somewhat rambling and technical explanation of pipes and valves and reservoirs. Kagome's grandfather, listening more and more intently, finally interrupted with corrections, elaborations. They disagreed about details, Souta certain, grandfather authoritative. As they wrangled, both seemed…relieved. Relieved to be talking about something besides Kagome, relieved to have something to do besides wait. Miroku noticed Mrs. Higurashi watching them, her face easing slightly, also relieved. So when the subject of plumbing had been exhausted, he pasted his best look of innocent wonder on his face and asked about the overhead lights.

For the next four hours, then, that was his job. Whenever Souta's face tightened, whenever grandfather sagged, Miroku played the astonished, curious yokel. For the next four hours, he collected contradictory sets of facts about electricity, elevators, air conditioning, television, intercoms, and linoleum flooring from Kagome's menfolk.

By the time the doctor called Mrs. Higurashi to the waiting room door, he was nearly blind with fatigue. But not trembling. And none of them had cried.

Until Mrs. Higurashi came back, happy tears in her eyes, a smile on her face. "The surgeon was able to repair the damage. Kagome is going to be all right!"

Grandfather burst into tearful prayers of thanksgiving, Souta let out a yell of delight and jumped up to hug his mother.

Miroku sagged in his chair. _All right_. For some reason, he had to blink his eyes several times. Kagome was going to _live._ Some of the long day's fear began to drain slowly out of his body, to be replaced by a bone-deep numbness. As the Higurashi family happily commiserated with one another, he rested his head back against the waiting room wall, closed his eyes, and finally let himself slip away.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I don't own this amazingly rich world, only play in it, and not for any monetary gain.

**Author's Note**: Thank you for all of your continued encouragement. It's such an honor. This was the last of the hard-to-edit chapters; weekly updates from now on. Respectful gratitude also to Sandra E for scattering her pearls, in this case the discussions of time paradoxes and karma in "Chasing Methuselah" that in some obscure, roundabout way gave me the idea for this plot.

**Chapter 3**

He woke almost immediately to the sound of discord in the Higurashi corner.

Mrs. Higurashi was arguing with Kagome's grandfather about staying in the hospital. As her mother, she had no intention of leaving the girl's bedside. The elderly shrine keeper feebly kept insisting that he would remain right here with her, praying, at least until Kagome awakened.

Mrs. Higurashi was looking worriedly at his trembling arms and haggard face, so Miroku stood up and asked, diffidently, "Excuse me, would it be possible for someone to direct me back to the Well? Now that I am sure that Kagome is safe, it is time that I return home to wait for Inuyasha." And kill Naraku. Which was not a lie at all.

Mrs. Higurashi immediately looked relieved, and so did the old man, he thought. Eventually it was decided that Grandfather Higurashi and Souta would both return to the shrine with Miroku, and stay there in order to guard against further damage.

When they emerged from the hospital, Miroku was surprised to notice that night had fallen. Which made sense, given how long they had been inside, but ordinary time had been swallowed by those perpetually glowing corridors. Although nighttime in this future didn't seem to be all that dark; there were lights everywhere and many of the buildings in and of themselves seemed to glow. The dull roaring sound he'd heard earlier seemed to be constant, coming out of the city itself.

By the time the "taxi" left them at the shrine, the lights were beginning to blur and run together across Miroku's eyes. The midnight sky was pale from all of the lights, but Souta insisted on fetching another oddly shaped hand lantern to help them pick through the burnt-out rubble of the well house. The building was in ruins, but the Well was intact. Intact, and covered with quantities of yellow ribbon covered in obscure characters: "Police."

"Are these charms we must remove?" he asked Grandfather Higurashi wearily.

"What? Oh. No, those are just police barriers, to keep anyone from falling into the Well. You can remove them if they are in your way."

Too tired to ask what a "police" was, Miroku lifted a corner of one ribbon, preparing to jump over the edge. Then he remembered: turning, he bowed politely to the man and boy, thanking them for their assistance and hospitality.

"Oh that's quite all right, young man," replied Grandfather Higurashi. "We are very grateful you brought Kagome to us in time. We wish you the best of luck in your return to your own era."

He was too tired, but it was time to go back and find Mushin and get the kazaana repaired, find Inuyasha and tell him where Kagome was, and then find Naraku and destroy him utterly. So Miroku jumped.

And landed on the well floor, hard. But as he peered hazily upward, the walls were still adorned not with the familiar ivy but instead with a rope ladder ascending up to the well mouth. As he stood stunned, Grandfather Higurashi's face appeared over the side of the well.

"What happened, Monk? Didn't the magic work for you?"

"Apparently not, Sir." He swallowed, tried to make his brain function again. "Perhaps the magic needs Kagome's presence to work," he tried. Now what should he do? Mushin, Inuyasha, Naraku: it was hard to think beyond that.

"Well, then, young man, it would be best if you came back up here and spent the night with us. Or several nights; I think it will be some days before Kagome is going to be up to jumping into wells."

Dazed, he thanked the shrine keeper as politely as he could manage and climbed back up into the future.

His vision dimming with exhaustion, he had only a confused impression of being led into a strangely shaped, two-story building on the other side of the main shrine. Souta brought him up a stairway and into a small room opulent with cabinets and trunks.

As he unrolled the futon, Souta was apologizing. "I'm sorry we don't have a more comfortable guest room than this. And the bed's so old-fashioned, but we haven't been able to get a new one yet…"

As Miroku sank onto the wonderful, soft, clean, mattress, he wondered drowsily what a new-fashioned bed could possibly be like, but the thought vanished as he sank entirely into the dark.

o o o

The next morning, the three of them went back to the hospital to see Kagome. But first they delayed long enough to provide Miroku with clean clothes and a much-needed bath. Souta explained the mechanics of the bathtub while Grandfather Higurashi rummaged through the shrine storehouse for old trainee's clothing that might fit.

The hot bath was nirvana and the Shinto trainee's pants and shirt were only a little too short for his tall frame.

The kazaana was a trickier problem. It was the painful throbbing of his hand that had awakened him once the deep edge of exhaustion was slept off. There had been fresh blood on the glove. During his bath, he examined yesterday's damage to the wind tunnel with alarm. There were five radiating gashes carved out from the bottomless center of his palm and a number of smaller cracks in between. Already, the kazaana looked wider than it had a day ago, five hundred years ago. And Mushin was temporarily on the other side of that damn Well, inaccessible until Inuyasha returned or Kagome recovered. He would have to repair it himself.

Luckily, he kept a needle and thread handy for post-battle robe repairs. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he stood over the sink in the Higurashi bathroom and tried to stitch up the gashes. It was hard to sew one-handed, peering under the protective beads. He couldn't figure out how to keep the knot at the end of each seam from being swallowed by the kazaana and beginning to unravel the rest. He was missing some trick of Mushin's, clearly. He cursed himself for not asking the old reprobate how it was done when he'd had the chance. He was shaking and sweating by the time he was finished, and the repairs still didn't look very stable. Well. It would have to do. Until Inuyasha got here.

The glove was another matter. Both Higurashis absolutely refused to allow him out of the house wearing it. A disgrace to the shrine he was now dressed to serve. And really, really dorky. Whatever that meant.

But he couldn't walk around with just the beads, especially not in the kazaana's current condition. After some futile arguing back and forth, Souta came up with a solution. "I know! Wait here! I just have to run around the corner…"

He returned in a few minutes, triumphantly brandishing a package that proved to contain a sort of stretchy, peach-colored glove that fit around the palm and down the wrist. "Here, they use these for sprained wrists and stuff. Your can wrap the beads around this and people will just think you are a very religious person with a sprained hand."

It didn't look as if it would be easy to access the kazaana wearing this new garment, but it was unlikely that he would need to do so in this era anyway. Miroku thanked the boy and carefully pulled on the glove, turning his back on the Higurashis while he did so in case of accidents.

When they arrived at the hospital shortly afterwards carrying paper cranes for Kagome and fresh clothes for Mrs. Higurashi, they found that the girl was awake and "taking visitors."

But first, the doctor and her mother had a series of warnings and restrictions to issue: She's very weak. Don't stay too long. No more than two people in the room at a time. Don't be too boisterous, or too loud. Don't say anything to upset her.

Mrs. Higurashi took Miroku aside. Bowing apologetically, she said, "Kagome is still very ill - she almost died. The doctors said that we should try to avoid upsetting her in any way. I know this will be difficult, but could you not tell her about your friends, that they died, just yet? I would be very grateful if you would wait until she is stronger."

"Of course," he replied. How close to death had she been?

Kagome, looking very pale and tired, was lying behind a blue curtain in a bed on a very high platform, thin clear tubes running from her arms to odd contraptions by the bedside. Under the tucked-in covers, she seemed to be wearing a robe even more shockingly scanty than her usual attire, but she had never looked less like an object of desire.

When her eye lit upon him, she rasped, "Miroku! How can you be here? Where's Inuyasha?"

It took all of his best verbal tricks to keep her from leaping out of bed immediately in order to go rescue Inuyasha from wherever he had gotten to. And once he managed to convince her that the half-demon would be along soon, she turned her questions to the others. That was much harder, but he managed to keep his face serene and his voice light: "They are waiting for us in the village." Not quite a lie. If his ofuda held against Naraku.

He got away from the room and her questions as soon as possible. He wondered if there was a best method for giving Naraku a lingering, painful death.

o o o

Back at the house that same evening, Grandfather Higurashi approached Miroku, hemming and hawing. "I remember that young men have many needs, many urges, and hmm, that's understandable. But Kagome has reminded me that you might not be aware of, hmm, certain _arrangements _that we make in this time, that are absolutely necessary, and hmm,…"

Miroku listened in growing embarrassment as the old man explained about a lethal disease called AIDS and the need to use a device called a "condom" when having sex. By the time the old man proceeded to bring out a number of these items and explain how to use them, it took an effort of will to keep from visibly cringing. Kagome thought so little of his self control that she felt it necessary, _from her sickbed_, to make sure that he was immediately informed of the hazards and practices of sex in her era? He had never felt such complete…doubt. Was this truly the sort of man he was in her eyes? In the eyes of his friends? He was shaken and ashamed and…lonely. He did not know how he would ever be able to look her in the eye again.

But of course, he did, the very next day. Because she was so very ill, and everyone was doing everything they could to avoid upsetting her, and he was completely trapped in her time until she recovered, or Inuyasha arrived.

o o o

Kagome was getting better, but very, very slowly. Miroku supposed that he shouldn't be surprised. He hadn't even imagined that a person could actually live without a spleen. But knowing that didn't help him much.

"Sitting still, doing nothing" had been fine when it was meditation, practiced to increase his spiritual powers. He had always done that quite well. But then you _used_ those spiritual powers for something. Preferably killing your enemies. This just sitting, with nothing to do and no clear end in sight, was driving him crazy.

He could feel the kazaana all of the time now, picking at his palm. His awkward stitches weren't holding very well.

Not that he mentioned any of this to Kagome. If he did, that crazy girl would insist on injuring herself by jumping into the Well long before she was able to stand the strain and the whole exercise would have been pointless. So he gave here a serene and smiling face, protecting her from her do-gooder self.

And besides, she never once _asked_ him.

When they weren't at the hospital visiting Kagome, Miroku tried to work off some of his impatience by exploring the shrine compound. It was interesting to see how the grounds had changed in five hundred years. Kagome's strange assumptions about the world were beginning to make a lot more sense. Sango would have liked this tidy, orderly place. It reminded him a little bit of the demon-slayer's village.

He didn't want to think about Sango. Or Shippo, or Kaede.

So instead he thought about Naraku. About the way he would hunt him down, as soon as Inuyasha arrived. About the vengeance he would take, as soon as he could get back through the Well.

o o o

The day that Kagome and her mother finally came home from the hospital, the Higurashis and their involuntary houseguest celebrated with a rousing bout of whispers and tiptoes. The temporarily bachelor household instantly converted to a convalescent regime. Days were measured out by the timing of Kagome's medications. The kitchen was devoted to invalid food.

Kagome didn't sleep well, many nights. There was no way to time the painkillers so that she didn't wake up in the middle of the night, pushed conscious by pain and unable to sleep again until time crept towards the next hour that she was allowed to take the drug. If her mother didn't wake as well, the girl usually called out to her for water or pillows or company. Mrs. Higurashi was always cheerful and solicitous, but she began to look even more wilted around the edges. Watching her, Kagome began to wilt around the edges too, biting her lip and trying to endure the midnight hours by herself.

If they went on like this, Kagome was going to take twice as long to heal. Miroku began to listen in his sleep for the small moans of her waking, began to quietly creep into her room, began to soothe her midnights with gentle conversation. He learned from Mrs. Higurashi which dose should be taken when, and how to tell time by Kagome's alarm clock. Mrs. Higurashi still often woke and joined her daughter, but sometimes she gratefully gave in to exhaustion and let Miroku take her place.

His job during these midnight visits was mostly to calm the fears that often returned with the pain. Kagome was frantic with worry about Inuyasha. He tried to reassure her, reminding her of all of the dangerous scrapes the half-demon had come out of so far. He tried to distract her, encouraging her to tell him strange and silly things from her childhood in this era. Sometimes he tried to make her smile by reminiscing with her about foolish moments from their journeys, but that was a more risky strategy. He avoided the subject of Sango and the others carefully, allowing her to keep the impression that they were waiting safely back in the village for them.

They invented a game for her, called "Not Making Kagome Laugh." It began when he had tried to amuse her with some nonsense tale, and she had complained that giggling hurt her stitches. He had immediately and penitently promised not to try to make her laugh ever again. Which had made her laugh even harder. So the game began: he would say absurd things in the most serious of voices, as if nothing could ever be funny again. She would try to reply in kind, try to not giggle. She didn't win the game very often, which worried him. It seemed cruel to be deliberately doing something that would cause her pain. But she explained that everything hurt anyway, and that she liked being able to make a joke out of the constant ache. It helped, somehow. Miroku was doubtful; his preferred response to pain was to do anything possible to avoid thinking about it. But he supposed that he had always known that Kagome was braver than he was.

Sometimes he missed his own time so much _that _hurt. Not the kazaana and Naraku and the fight to the death. The clean smell of the air. The wood smoke of their campfire. Shippo squealing with delight as he brought his latest drawing over to Kagome for approval. Sango.

He missed Sango, desperately. Missed having her by his side, to tease, to flirt, to enrage, to try and make her smile. Missed having her be _his_.

But as the static lonely days spun away, Miroku began to doubt. Had he ever _really _had her? It was frightening how quickly the plans they had made for their future together were becoming blurred, hard to remember. Was Sango's affection, their romance, just an equally hazy illusion? Had he ever really believed it would actually come true? Had _she_?

It was all Kagome's fault. Playing matchmaker. Dealing hope like a sake-seller to alcoholics.

He didn't want to hate her.

It was easier to focus on hating Naraku. On meticulously planning what he was going to do to him when Inuyasha arrived and carried him back through the Well.

o o o

They were in Kagome's room again, late afternoon, distracting her from the fading painkiller.

At a pause in the conversation, Kagome caught him looking at the dirt still caught under his fingernails. Giggling teasingly, she asked, "What in the world have you been doing lately to get so dirty, Miroku?"

Unburying the dead, he thought. "Digging you out," he said.

"You did? Oh. And, um, thank you! I guess it was a pleasant change from all of the burying people that you usually do, huh?"

He refused to cry. Smiling gently, he said, "It was a little too exciting at the time, Kagome."

"Oh." She blushed self-consciously, and Miroku was groping desperately for a way to shift this conversation before she inevitably asked what he thought the others were doing while they were gone when a loud voice interrupted from the window.

"Oi, Kagome! They told me you were injured. What's Miroku doing in your room?"

"Inuyasha! You're alive!"

"Of course I am! That stupid demon isn't going to hurt me! I'm alive and ready to take you back to punish Naraku once and for all for what he did to our friends."

"What he did?"

Oblivious to the girl's alarm or Miroku's frantic grimaces, Inuyasha turned his attention to the monk. "Don't worry, Miroku," he said soberly. "The village headman asked me to tell you that they buried them just the way you specified. I took a look, and the charms are all over the graves. You can check them when we go back."

"Graves? Inuyasha? Who died? Not--"

"You didn't tell her?"

"Kagome, I am sorry. The doctors thought it best that you not be upset. Sango and Shippo and Lady Kaede were killed when the hut collapsed on you. It was too late to save them."

"Shippo? Sango? Kaede? Dead? No! _No_! We are supposed to save them!" She looked at him like she had never seen him before. Then, "You jerk, how could you not tell me?"

"Kagome--"

"Don't talk to me! I hate you!"

Her agonized cries had brought Mrs. Higurashi into the room. "Don't shout so at Miroku, dear. I asked him not to mention it just yet. You were so sick in the hospital…"

"Oh Mama, Shippo, and Sango, and, and Kaede are gone!" Kagome flung herself crying, heartbroken, into her mother's arms.

Inuyasha shifted uncomfortably, muttering under his breath "No sense in not facing things right away, idiots." Miroku tried to stand as unobtrusively still as possible, wishing Inuyasha to Hell and himself with him.

Inuyasha, embarrassed, moved to leave the room. That prompted Kagome to cling to him, sobbing, begging him not to leave her too.

It was time to go.

Unnoticed, Miroku drifted away from the room. Drifted away, until eventually he found himself staring at the well house ruin. Inuyasha was here at last. He could finally go back and check Sango's grave for himself and see if Mushin could repair the kazaana…

_Wait_. The kazaana was _here_. In this future time. But that meant…

He suddenly felt very cold.

He returned in a daze to Kagome's bedroom to find Mrs. Higurashi offering both him and Inuyasha the indefinite hospitality of her house. She looked so strained that he tried to accept as graciously as his distracted state would allow.

Kagome was still looking at both of them as if they had betrayed her.

"There's no need for us to stay," Inuyasha interrupted. "Now that I know Kagome's all right I can take Miroku back through the Well and we can get to work finding Naraku. I'll come back and check up on Kagome later."

"No!" cried the girl. "I'm not letting you go back there without me! It's too dangerous!"

"Kagome is more correct than she knows, Inuyasha," said Miroku. "I do not believe that there is any purpose to be served by returning to our own time."

"What about the KILLING NARAKU purpose, idiot?"

"That's precisely it. I've been thinking. If my curse exists as long as Naraku is alive, then logically when he is dead the kazaana should cease to exist."

"Yeah, we know all that. So?"

"Well, the kazaana is still here, in my hand, _in this time_. Which should mean that Naraku isn't dead, in this time. Which means that we never succeeded in destroying him in the past. Since the presence of my kazaana here in the future reveals that Naraku survived our era still alive, the only thing you could accomplish by returning there would be to endanger yourself needlessly."

"I don't buy it. That the kazaana is here now just means that we haven't yet killed him in the past. Once we do that-"

"No, Inuyasha, I think that Miroku may be right," Kagome interrupted, wiping away her tears and looking worried. "Because there's a time theory paradox thing that says that if you go back in time you can only do what you already did, otherwise you would change your own future and cease to exist. In which case you would never have gone back to the past in the first place. And therefore wouldn't have changed the past. So you see? What we did in the past is already over. Going back won't change it."

"Humph. That doesn't make any sense."

"No, it does. I've researched a lot about it since I started going back through the Well."

At this point Miroku felt compelled to hedge: "The one problem with this theory, Kagome, is that, as you have frequently told us, there are no demons in this era. If that's the case, how did Naraku survive? If we didn't kill him in the past, how is it that he is not terrorizing people in the present day?"

"I don't know."

Mrs. Higurashi, who had been listening in uneasy silence to this exchange, interjected: "Perhaps something happened to him that limited his power?"

"WE did. So I'm going back to DO it," declared Inuyasha.

"No! Not until we've had time to investigate," insisted Kagome.

"How are we going to 'investigate' a demon here, among so many people? There must be hundreds."

"Millions. But I can still sense shards, and you and Miroku can still sense demonic auras. So we will wait until I am better and then begin searching, just walking and riding around. We'll start with Tokyo, and if that doesn't work, we'll begin checking out other cities. I mean, Mom, if it's OK with you for me to travel around with them here." She turned beseeching eyes on her mother.

Then they negotiated. Mrs. Higurashi did not want her daughter embarking on anything so dangerous and time consuming. Kagome pointed out that she was going to have to take the rest of the year off from school anyway after everything she'd missed lately. And she agreed not to begin the search until she was perfectly healthy. But search she must. "I'm the only one who can sense the Sacred Jewel, Mom. It's still my fault Naraku has so much of it, so it's my _duty_ to get it back from him." That appeal to honor finally worked, though Mrs. Higurashi extracted a solemn promise that Kagome would go nowhere until cleared by her doctors.

At this, Inuyasha snorted, gripped the hilt of his sword, and began to turn towards the window. "Well, _I_ don't have to wait around for you to get better. I can start looking now."

"No!" simultaneously cried Kagome and her mother.

"You can't go out hunting in Tokyo without me, Inuyasha," declared Kagome. "You will just get in trouble with the humans and warn Naraku that we are coming."

"Kagome is right, my dear," added Mrs. Higurashi. "Now is the time for planning for when she is well. In the meantime, we can start preparing by getting you and Miroku into proper modern clothes, so that you can blend in on the streets."

"Streets! It's much easier around here to do rooftops. And I still don't like sitting around doing nothing in the meantime."

"Stop fussing, Inuyasha!" cried the girl in frustration. "We _will_ find Naraku and kill him once and for all for what he did to our friends! We will! Right, Miroku?"

Kagome looked determined and sad, but at least she wasn't crying anymore. Personally, Miroku was entirely with Inuyasha on this one, but it seemed best to smile and agree. So he did.

But it was an effort.

The kazaana was expanding steadily along the tears he had not been able to repair. Visible increments of skin were vanishing every day. At this rate, within a week or two the abyss would reach the edge of his palm, and then….

Kagome would eventually recover, and she Inuyasha would find Naraku and defeat him, of that he was certain. But Miroku was running out of time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** The usual. Dialogue from Episode 48 of the anime series is reproduced in this chapter solely for dramatic effect and with no intent to make a profit or defraud the rightful owners of theirs.

**Author's Note**: Time for the fourth inning stretch! Because Kagome needs an arc, too. Includes a tribute of sorts to Horridporrid's wonderful story, "Lessons," because its images are too embedded in my Miroku-Kagome imagination to remove without major surgery.

**Chapter 4**

Higurashi Kagome had been clawed, stabbed, cursed, shrunk, possessed, bitten, buried, hurled through the air, and had her soul sucked out of her, but she had never imagined that pain could be like this: the cruel slow constant throb of it. Her days alternated between drug-induced blurriness and wakeful endurance as the painkillers inevitably wore off too early.

The hunt for Naraku loomed, impending but not urgent, still comfortably far away from this hazy convalescence.

They had time.

For now, her task was to endure the pain. The pain of her healing wounds. The pain of her irrevocably lost friends.

The pain of Inuyasha's constant complaining.

When he had first arrived and learned of her condition, he had been scared, careful with her, patient. But now that the deep fear for her safety was wearing off, his natural impatience was reasserting itself.

She understood, of course. How angry he was about the death of their friends, and his failure to prevent it. How desperately he wanted to be out and doing something about it, warrior that he was. How trapped he was by the pride that would not allow him to express how truly worried about her she knew he was. She understood, and forgave him, as she had so many times before.

But…

Lately, he almost never stopped. Whatever the subject, whatever the time of day, he was impatiently, irritably, _loud_ about his disapproval. Sniping at her, sniping at Miroku, sniping at the twentieth-first century and this whole heartbreaking delay. After his boisterous attempts to "put some heart into her" one restless midnight woke the entire family, he had to be banished from the house at night. He claimed he preferred that anyway, sulking off to sleep in the trees behind her house.

They had fallen into a pattern, the three of them. Inuyasha would complain about some necessary inertia in Kagome's recovery. Kagome would cringe, trying not to feel hurt. Miroku would intervene, dragging Inuyasha outside for some exercise, or, more frequently, distracting her with an entertaining new subject or a solicitous inquiry about her needs. Which, she was beginning to suspect, were attempts to _show_ Inuyasha how he should be behaving without actually going to the risk of saying it to his face. Sometimes it worked, and Inuyasha would calm, speak to her gently, sit quietly by her bedside, remember for a while that he was her friend.

More and more often, he stomped off in a huff.

And every time the sequence played itself out, Kagome wondered. She loved Inuyasha, she did, and she had promised to be by his side and take care of him always and she _would_, but… Couldn't he sometimes take care of _her_? She felt really guilty for feeling this way, but sometimes when Inuyasha stomped off, leaving her with Miroku, it was…a relief.

Miroku was a relief.

Miroku, who gave her quiet, humorous companionship and kept most of his thoughts to himself. After each of his interventions, Kagome felt nothing so much as abjectly grateful. She really wanted to thank him, and to apologize for yelling at him before.

But she didn't know what to do about Sango. Or say.

She missed the demon-slayer so much herself, kept forgetting to believe that she was really gone. She wondered if it was easier or worse, for him, having found her body, having meant to spend his life with her. Sometimes she thought she saw a strain in his eyes that had never been there before. But he didn't ever say, and she couldn't think of a way to ask him.

o o o

o o o

Inuyasha was doing it again.

"Kagome, why do you have to take so many medicines? They don't seem to be working for you anyway! You should let me brew up some of my healing tea like I did before. I'll just go out and--"

Miroku interrupted. "Grandfather Higurashi has told us that some of those ingredients are not available in this era, Inuyasha." He turned to Kagome. "Is there anything you _would_ like to drink now that you are awake?" he asked. "Would it hurt you to sit up for a while if we helped you?"

But this time around Inuyasha looked at him with newly dawning suspicion. "Watch it, Monk," he said. "You're being pretty quick to offer Kagome all kinds of personal services these days. What are you trying to get away with here?"

Miroku's mouth thinned, and Kagome waited in horrified fascination for their regular pattern to shatter into something new.

To her enormous relief, Mama bustled in just then, hands full of shopping bags "Hello everyone! Look at what Souta and I have found: the perfect new clothes for Inuyasha and Miroku. I just need to have you try them on to make sure that I converted Grandpa's measurements into sizes that fit."

"I don't see why I need any new clothes," scowled Inuyasha. "The ones I have are just fine."

"You are much more generous than we deserve, Mrs. Higurashi," interjected Miroku hastily. "We are very grateful."

Inuyasha was opening his mouth to argue, so Kagome joined in. "Please Inuyasha? It would help so much with our search for Naraku if you could blend in on the streets."

Grumpily, he agreed, and Souta took them off to explain the intricacies of modern men's clothing in private.

After a few minutes, Inuyasha stalked back into the room, practically snarling. "Kagome! I can't believe that you really think my wearing this stuff is going to help us find Naraku."

Kagome had to work very hard to keep from giggling. Because Inuyasha looked like a thug. In an outfit clearly influenced by Souta's notion of what was cool, he stood stiff-legged in baggy jeans, his big swordsman's muscles bulging out of a sleeveless red-and-white basketball shirt, a rolled bandana around his head to hide his ears. He looked just like one of those teenage criminals who hung around in dubious video arcades, smoking and intimidating little kids and undoubtedly dealing drugs and mugging people. But she couldn't tell him that and still have a hope that he would agree to keep on wearing the clothes, so giggling was not an option. Using all of the skills she had honed trying to beat Miroku at their laughing game, she forced a serious look on her face and tried to listen sympathetically as Inuyasha complained.

"How is anyone supposed to move in these 'jeans' things?" he grumbled. "They feel like demon-hide armor without any of the joints. There's NO WAY I am wearing these things every day."

"Patience, Inuyasha," urged Miroku, wandering into the room behind him, bare arms bent up to retie his ponytail fastener. "Souta informs me that these 'jeans' will become more comfortable once we have 'broken them in.' I am sure that once he has explained that procedure to us, Mrs. Higurashi's most generous gift will become quite easy to wear. Is that a reasonable hope, Kagome?" Still fiddling with his hair, he stepped around Inuyasha's shoulder, and smiled at her.

Kagome couldn't answer, momentarily too busy just remembering how to breathe. "Uhn," she gasped, looking to her mother for support. But Mama was in a similar difficulty.

Because Miroku…didn't look like a thug. Kagome had always sort of known that he was handsome, but it had never occurred to her how twenty-first century casual wear would so comprehensively reveal exactly what his flirtatious smirk had always promised you could get. But now… The flat planes of the navy blue T-shirt somehow brought out the startling indigo of his eyes in a way that his robes never had. The form-fitting shirt and straight-leg jeans perfectly displayed the broad shoulders, the long body, the firm, slender muscles, the bulge in his…Eeep!

Miroku was saying something. He repeated it, looking at them uneasily. "Have I put something on incorrectly?"

Mrs. Higurashi recovered first. "No dear, just thinking that color blue suits you."

Luckily and for once Miroku missed the subtext entirely. "It was very kind of you to choose shirts that match the colors of our robes," he smiled.

"There's no way this suits me," Inuyasha interjected. "Miroku, you have to be insane…"

Under cover of Inuyasha's argument, Kagome pulled her mother close to whisper urgently, "Mom, did Grandpa have that talk about, you know, AIDS and stuff. Because, um, kid in a candy shop, and now there's absolutely _no_ _barrier_…"

"I believe he did." She gave an uneasy frown. "But I'll check with Grandpa just in case."

o o o

o o o

Once properly clothed, Inuyasha took to wandering around the city looking for Naraku. After extracting his solemn oath that he wouldn't actually confront any demon he happened to encounter without coming home and telling them first, Kagomesimply gave up trying to stop him from going out. She was just too tired to fight that battle every day.

As she could have predicted, he didn't search in a systematic way and didn't have any real luck. Except…

"Well, there was one odd thing," he reported to them one evening, after another fruitless afternoon away from the shrine. "Every now and then I would pass this eating place, and wherever I was, it always looked exactly the same as the other ones. And there was a very faint demonic aura coming from it."

"A demonic aura?" fretted Kagome. "You didn't go any closer, did you?"

"No, no, I promised, didn't I? And it didn't smell like Naraku or anything. Just frying meat. But I can take you there to check it out when you get better."

"You said it always looked exactly the same? What did it look like?"

"Eh. Those big glass windows everything has. Red benches and square tables inside. A big red sign out front with yellow characters I couldn't read. Maybe some kind of a spell or curse?"

"What kind of characters?" asked Miroku. "Can you draw them here for Kagome to see? Maybe she will recognize them."

He did so, laboriously.

Kagome began to laugh, wincing as the stitches pulled.

"Hey! What's so funny--?"

"Oh, Inuyasha, that's just Wacdnald's. It's an American fast food chain. They have them all over the world. It can't possibly have anything to do with Naraku."

"Well, I felt what I felt. It _has_ a demonic aura, whatever you say."

"What's an American?" asked Miroku.

o o o

o o o

"SIT!"

Only she was so weak today and it was so hard to draw a deep breath without hurting that it came out more like "…sit…." But sometimes Inuyasha's impatience could really, really hurt. Couldn't he see that she was healing as fast as she could? That she would give anything to be able to be up and around making Naraku pay for what he did to their friends? That she was going just as crazy as he was spending her days cooped up here in her little room?

It was only when she noticed Souta and Miroku's shocked faces that she realized she had said it all aloud.

Even Inuyasha looked a little dismayed, a little guilty, from his position on the floor, like he knew he'd gone too far.

Miroku, watching her face, watching his, stood up decisively. "Inuyasha," he ordered crisply, "As soon as you've recovered, pick up all of those pillows and blankets and follow me."

"Why? Wha- Hey! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, MONK!"

Because Miroku had scooped up Kagome, bedsheets and all, and was carrying her out of her room. Carrying her, cradled firmly in his arms, down the stairs, past her startled mother, and out of the house. Out of the yard, along the side of the shrine, and over to the Sacred Tree. Trailed by protesting Higurashis and an enraged Inuyasha.

"Put those things on that bench for Kagome to lie on, Inuyasha," he directed. He looked down at her still in his -- really, very strong -- arms and smiled. "I think we all need a little fresh air today." She nodded up at him, mute, astonished.

Mrs. Higurashi's scolding stopped; her frowns changed into a grateful smile. "What a good idea," she exclaimed. "I'll go make some tea." They got Kagome settled lying on the low stone bench next to the Tree, the others sprawled out on the shady gravel. Souta fetched some snacks, and Mama brought the tea. The day was warm, but not hot. A gentle wind was rustling through the leaves, making the charms jingle against the trunk. For a moment they all sat in silence, enjoying the soft breeze and the whisper of the leaves. The city was nothing more than a quiet hum in the background.

It was really, really nice.

Kagome looked up into the shifting branches and her mind wandered, lovingly, to all of the important moments this Tree had shared in her life with Inuyasha. The strange moments: the very first day she met him, pinned to its trunk five hundred years in the past. The magical moments: the way their thoughts had touched across centuries, when Menomaru had sent the snowstorm freezing through the ages. The hard moments: when she had fled home after seeing him with Kikyo, realizing for the first time that she loved him. She remembered her anguish that day, and the conversation that she and her mother had had, sitting right here on this very bench.

"_When you're close to the Sacred Tree_," her mother had asked. "_Don't you feel a strange kind of power? As though you feel truer to yourself? That somehow its presence makes your heart feel much more pure?_" Kagome remembered how angry she had been with Inuyasha, and how full of doubt about what to do. Her mother had described the way that the Tree had helped to clarify her own future many years ago. "_This is the special place where your father proposed to me_," she had explained, "_And of course I loved him like no other_." But they had argued the day before, and she had begun to doubt if he and she were really meant for each other. "_But the instant I walked under this tree, my mind cleared, and I accepted his proposal_."

Learning of her mother's doubts had helped her resolve her own, and Kagome had returned to Inuyasha's side shortly after that talk. Somehow the Tree had made them closer than ever, she thought.

Her happy daydreams were interrupted.

"I don't know why you are so attached to this Tree, Kagome," groused Inuyasha. "It's not like anything good ever happened here."

"Wasn't it good to meet me, Inuyasha?' she asked quietly, hurt.

"Yes…," he softened, but then vigorously returned to his point. "But that was just that one thing. What about Kikyo shooting me? What about all of those years I just hung there, helpless to be anything but a spectacle for tourists to stare at? It's nothing I feel sentimental about."

Kagome felt betrayed. Didn't he care about anything that had happened _after_ she freed him from Kikyo's arrow?

And what should have been Miroku's usual pleasant attempt to defuse the subject had an uncharacteristic edge to it. "Take comfort that at least you were a spectacle with teeth, Inuyasha. Did I ever tell you that my grandfather first met Naraku because he was sightseeing at you and your Tree? He had journeyed here to consult with the miko who guarded the Shikon Jewel -- Kikyo, of course. But when he arrived to find her recently dead and the village in an uproar with only her young sister to handle the spiritual duties, he went to investigate the demon pinned to the Tree instead. It was there he met a suspicious peasant who turned out to be Naraku in the first of his many disguises."

"Oh really? Then how come you never mentioned that to us when we first met? It seems like a lot to leave out, Monk."

"I didn't know it at that time. I figured it out later, talking with Lady Kaede; she remembered him." Miroku, who had sat up to talk to Inuyasha, stretched back out on the ground, head pillowed on his arms. Looking up at the wavering branches, he added, again with that odd edge to his voice, "I find it amusing and ironic that as a consequence of your imprisonment I, too, am keeping you company under the same Sacred Tree as my grandfather did, but five hundred years into the future, and not with the miko he was too late to encounter but rather with her reincarnation instead." He smiled briefly at Kagome, and went back to staring up into the branches.

Inuyasha's ears flattened in irritation. "Humph. Consult with Kikyo? More likely seduce her," he retaliated. "It's funny how the apple hasn't fallen very far from _your_ family tree." His ears pricked forward and he grinned at a new thought. "You know, Miroku, if Kagome's the reincarnation of Kikyo, you've _got_ to be the reincarnation of your grandfather. There can't be _two _such womanizing con man souls floating around the universe pissing off Naraku."

And just there, sitting under her family's Sacred Tree, Kagome had a moment of…clarity.

Miroku's grandfather would have met Kikyo? So they might have…

Miroku frowned, and began to lecture the half-demon on theology. The rising wind sent Inuyasha's gorgeous hair flying across her vision like a triumphant white banner. So beautiful. So unique. She sighed in longing, habitual.

The moment passed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer**: Not mine. Not for profit. Not intending any disrespect.

**Author's Note**: Have I mentioned that I love you guys? Thank you for sticking with this so wonderfully! Sorry for the longer-than-promised wait. That pesky business of earning a living.

**Chapter 5 **

It was impossible how the days passed so sickening slowly, and so sickeningly fast, measured in Kagome's recuperation, measured in the widening kazaana. Because panic was pointless, and tears, Miroku tried to continue as normal, as needed. Soothing Kagome after a go-around with Inuyasha, deflecting the half-demon's impatience, helping the Higurashi family with as many chores as he could manage without actually opening his right hand. He kept it unobtrusively held in a loose fist all of the time now, afraid that stretching it open would accelerate the spread of the cracks. Kagome's family didn't notice, worried as they were about her. Inuyasha never noticed anybody except Kagome. And Kagome he took care to always approach with his left side forward.

He really, really, really wanted to get laid.

Barring that, a very great deal of very strong drink would do.

And if this had been his own time, he certainly would have tried to drown the moments in just those familiar ways. Even in this strange future, there were possibilities. The pretty girl who escorted her grandmother to the shrine every afternoon was definitely letting him know that he was welcome to follow her home. The woman who delivered incense and didn't look anything like Sango wore skimpier and skimpier skirts each time she came and kept dropping things on her way out of the courtyard so that she had to bend down to pick them up just where he would see. He had even begun to follow up, flirting the incense woman to the shrine gate, getting ready to try out an updated version of the well-worn line about his tragic--non-contagious--fatal condition. When he was stopped by the view from the top of the stairs, and what it meant.

Tokyo was _enormous_, stretching as far as he could see. Tokyo was _full_. Of people. No empty space anywhere in sight, beyond the shrine complex.

Nothing the size of his father's grave, at least.

And that was the final irony to Grandfather Higurashi's humiliating little talk about AIDS: that he didn't actually dare have sex with anyone at all. Tokyo was so full, and the kazaana was so fragile. Just one unconsidered move in the midst of passion, and he could kill hundreds of people. Not to mention the girl.

Drinking turned out to be similarly problematic. Even if he'd had any modern-day money or known where to find a sake-seller outside of the shrine, he still wasn't willing to risk the kazaana breaking in a tavern while he was too befuddled to find an exit. Like sake, like sex: Tokyo was still too damn full.

So. What were his alternatives?

Surprisingly, his Buddhist training was not the resource he had expected it to be in this situation. Hadn't he been taught that the only way to make your peace with the future was to make do with what the present moment can bring? That should have been easy. Making do with the moment was his specialty. It was just that his moments had rarely been so continuously frustrating. Then what about all of those helpful Noble Truths? _Life is suffering_. Well, no shit. _Only by giving up useless desires can you rise above that suffering_. Ah. Perhaps here was the source of his difficulty; Miroku had always had a problem sticking to strict orthodoxy on this point. He had always thought that the best way to rise above suffering was by doing whatever it took to get as much _not_-suffering for yourself as possible.

So he'd always done whatever it took. Even when women and wine weren't readily available, he had always been able to find some new evil to fight, search some new village for news of Naraku, study under some new teacher, master some new skill. It had never been in his nature to sit down in a temple and wait for fate, as his father had.

But now, he was trapped. No women. No wine. And there was nothing he could _do_. And it was this last thing, he was surprised to find, that infuriated him the most.

Not that he didn't try. Under the guise of solitary prayer, he unobtrusively paced out the dimensions of the shrine courtyards. He thought about wind velocity and airflow direction and minimizing damage to the buildings and he carefully picked his spot. But that wasn't a very time consuming endeavor, or a very large accomplishment. And, he was realizing to his dismay, he _wanted_ to accomplish something.

Miroku had spent his life dutifully repeating the teachings that life's ambitions had no meaning, and he had thought that he believed them. But when it came down to it, he discovered that he had always assumed that if he kept travelling, kept fighting demons, he would reach his end by some heroic act, leave some useful legacy behind. Instead, what had he finally achieved? Learned to turn on an electric light. Made a demon-slayer jealous before he failed to save her life.

Useless desires? He _needed_ accomplishment. Not this meaningless, empty wait.

o o o

o o o

The tearing pain in his hand woke him, the beads shattering, the howl of the supernatural wind. And in the shaking dark he heard a splintering, a tearing: wood, screens, cloth. The kazaana was breaking inside the house, and he hadn't been awake to notice the warning signs. And he tried to scream and he couldn't, as the wind sucked the air from his lungs, pulled walls and furniture and oh Buddha save him _people_, the Higurashis, Kagome, into the vortex, and --

He woke, shaking, drenched in sweat. The room was still and dark around him, the house silent and peaceful beyond. A dream. He rolled onto his back in the tangled sheets, breathing deeply. Go back to sleep. He closed his eyes and counted breaths, slow and deep. Just a dream.

His eyes flew open. A dream that could so easily come true. Miroku took another deep breath, let it out with a sigh. Sat up, reluctant. Just go back to sleep, right?

But the house wasn't safe.

So he straightened his shoulders, got to his feet, and gathered up the coverlet and the pillow. Quietly he left the room, walked softly down the hall, down the stairs, out through the front door.

"Hey Miroku, what's going on?" called Inuyasha groggily from his perch amongst the trees.

"Nothing, Inuyasha," replied Miroku softly. "I've just decided to sleep under the stars tonight. Good night."

A chuckle from the half demon followed. "Heh. Finally getting some sense, I see." Inuyasha's voice faded into the background as he kept on walking away from the house.

Lying on his back in the middle of the shrine's front courtyard, Miroku did try to pick out the familiar constellations, but they were all obscured by Tokyo's nighttime glow. He lay watching the strange, restless lights of the city for a long time before he slept.

o o o

o o o

In the days that followed, it occurred to Miroku once or twice that the easiest thing to do would be to just open the kazaana and get it over with. But the stubbornness that had kept him moving forward from the day of his father's death was habitual by now. For the same reason, he didn't ask Inuyasha to take him through the Well. Going back to the past for one last glorious battle was tempting. But that would be its own kind of admission of defeat.

Buddhism wasn't going to be any help, apparently. Pride would have to do.

So he kept on trying. Modern technology was turning out to be the best distraction he could find. It really was wonderful, the things these people of the future had devised for their own convenience. He delved eagerly into every mysterious gadget, demanding explanations and demonstrations from any Higurashi at hand. To Mrs. Higurashi's poorly concealed amusement--and open delight--he learned to use the vacuum cleaner, and operate the rice cooker.

Television was a modern distraction that Kagome and her family also liked. They had moved a futon and piles of pillows into the formal living room so that she could lie comfortably while they watched these incredible tiny lifelike moving stories. Inuyasha was inclined to scoff at this entertainment, but nevertheless hung around in the background wherever Kagome was. Miroku, on the other hand, was endlessly fascinated with the puzzle of how that simple box could project such clear images of what Kagome assured him were real actors - and actresses! It took a very forceful warning from Mrs. Higurashi to keep him from enlisting Souta in an investigation of the thing's entrails. That was not a frustration only because watching the future unfold on the glowing screen was interesting in its own right.

One evening, a little over a week after Inuyasha had arrived, Kagome, Souta, Miroku, and the half-demon were preparing to view a "movie" on the television. First they had to watch a series of the intriguing "commercials" that future craftsmen used to vend their wares on this device. One of these featured a fashionably suited and somehow familiar-looking merchant touting the healthfulness of his company's eating places.

Inuyasha's ears pricked forward. "Hey! That's the place with the demonic aura I told you about! Wacdnald's. And see? That guy looks a lot like Naraku's human form. We should go check it out."

"Don't be ridiculous, Inuyasha," scoffed Kagome. "He's the CEO of Wacdnald's Japan branch. He's just a businessman, and Wacdnald's is just a business. It's only a coincidence. Naraku wouldn't still be using the same human body after all of this time. And he certainly wouldn't survive all of these centuries just to become involved in fast food!"

"Well, their success with that greasy food could be considered a bit demonic," giggled Souta.

Inuyasha looked stubborn. "See? I'm telling you, we should go check out this guy right now."

Kagome looked daggers at brother and half-demon alike, drew in a deep, irritated breath, opened her mouth--

"What's a CEO?" intervened Miroku, automatically.

The flurry of competing explanations from Kagome and Souta only subsided when a blare of music announced the start of the movie.

The movie was "an American action film," which meant that the characters looked very strange, although they seemed to speak Japanese perfectly well. Souta explained that the American voices had been "dubbed," but Miroku wasn't entirely sure what that meant. According to Kagome and Souta, this was a very typical American action movie. The main characters were two men, one light, one dark, who seemed to have some sort of official enforcement capacity. The "action" consisted of numerous "gun" duels and high-speed automobile pursuits in which the two heroes battled the henchmen of a charismatic villain in order to stop something incomprehensible involving "nuclear" from happening. Miroku resolved to ask Souta about this after the movie was over, but found the dangerous escapades enjoyable--were guns really that accurate?--even without being precisely clear about the context.

About an hour into the movie, the heroes paused to have a shockingly open conversation about their feelings. The dark one revealed that he was planning to propose marriage to his longtime sweetheart as soon as the current battle was over. "OK!" cried Kagome and Souta simultaneously. "Expendable sidekick!"

"What's _that_?" asked Inuyasha disdainfully.

"Oh, in American movies the expendable sidekick is always the best friend of the hero," explained Kagome. "And he always dies in the second half, to make the hero's fight against the villain more tragic and personal and stuff."

"Yeah, and that personal conversation is the giveaway," giggled Souta. "The expendable sidekick always dies pretty soon after he reveals an unfulfilled love or ambition."

"Humph," Inuyasha dismissed, losing interest.

"That hardly seems fair to the sidekick," argued Miroku, irritated.

"But it's necessary for the plot. The finale wouldn't have nearly the drama without it," Souta pronounced like a pint-sized sage.

"Well, that's no reason to just cut short a man's life," he countered hotly.

He noticed that Kagome was looking at him in astonishment. "It's just a movie, Miroku," she said, puzzled.

"Not worth the time of day, if you ask me," interjected Inuyasha. "Kagome, I don't know why you waste your time with these things when you could be out looking for Jewel shards, or at least figuring out ways to find them, since you are still so weak you can't seem to get out of bed for very long."

Kagome flinched, and, looking at her unhappy face, Miroku felt his temper snap. Springing to his feet and crossing the room in a couple of strides, he took Inuyasha's shoulder in an iron left-handed grip. "Inuyasha, come outside with me for a moment," he said, pulling the surprised half-demon towards the door. "There is something we need to discuss."

Inuyasha's surprise got them through the kitchen and out into the yard, but then he angrily pulled himself away from Miroku's grasp. "What's gotten into you, Monk?"

Kagome is _human_, Inuyasha," he replied fiercely. "Humans are weak, and unable to always control their destinies. If you care about her as much as you claim to, then you _must_ start accepting that there are things she will not be able to do, no matter how much she wants to."

Predictably, Inuyasha lost his temper. "And what business is it of yours how I treat Kagome? I don't need lectures on good behavior from any hypocritical womanizing so-called holy man!"

And before he did or said something even more foolish in response, Miroku turned his back on the angry half-demon and stalked away.

He found himself standing inside the main shrine, fists clenched, shaking with rage. Accomplishment? He was a fool. He wasn't even going to manage to teach Inuyasha how to behave properly towards Kagome before he ran out of time.

His temper was fraying around the edges like the kazaana, but that was no excuse. If he wasn't careful, he was going to become as irritable as Inuyasha. And he was damned if he was going to let that half-demon beat him in a contest of self control. Besides, surliness was no way to repay the Higurashis for the first genuinely opulent hospitality he had ever known.

It was just that he was so fucking angry, and so completely afraid. And the fact that there was nothing, _nothing_ he could do about it was hollowing him out from within, as if the kazaana had opened a tributary inside his heart.

He really, really wanted to get laid.

Drinking homemade sake with Kagome's grandfather in the storehouse turned out to be his only alternative.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** The usual

**Author's Note**: Uzume is a Shinto goddess of joy and happiness.

**Chapter 6**

Kagome woke to pain, as usual, her regular midnight restlessness. What wasn't unusual lately was that she was alone. She remembered again with dismay that Miroku had recently taken to sleeping outside in the shrine courtyard, far beyond the reach of her voice. When asked, he had smiled that he liked looking at the stars as he was falling asleep. And sometimes she thought that was a little odd, given the dishonest lengths he'd gone to in order to get them indoor lodgings during their travels. But somehow she always got distracted before she remembered to ask him why he'd changed his mind.

What was also unusual this particular night was that she was waking up to sounds. The sounds of stumbling steps on the stairway and along the hall. Incredibly, the sound of her grandfather's high, quavering voice singing…a hymn to Uzume?…slurred, and a little off key. The sound of Miroku's husky baritone murmuring in answer, also a little slurred. What in the world were they doing?

She listened hard, and thought she could decipher the creak of Grandpa's bedroom door opening, the voices fading as they disappeared within. A little later, she heard the door close again, and erratic footsteps in the hallway.

"Miroku?" she called softly.

Her door opened slightly and he leaned his head in, eyes sleepy, mouth relaxed. "I'm so very sorry, Kagome, did we wake you?"

"No, I was up. Will you…? No. I'm sorry, you must be tired. Good night."

He blinked at her for a moment, eyes straying to the clock by her bedside, and his face grew a little more focused. "Ah, would you mind if I sat with you for a while to clear my head before I go outside?" he asked lightly. "Otherwise I fear that in my current state I might wander oblivious out of the shrine grounds entirely."

She giggled gratefully. "I can't believe you got drunk with my grandfather. Mama is going to kill you."

"I can't believe that your grandfather makes such potent sake. I'm not sure I would have accepted his invitation to sample the results of his 'hobby' had I known."

"You actually drank _that_ stuff? No one with any sense does that."

He laughed, a low, fluid chuckle that unexpectedly _touched _something deep inside her belly. "Yes, so I see."

He wandered a little unsteadily into the room, bringing the odors of sake and storehouse and an indefinable pleasant muskiness in along with him. But he settled on the floor in his usual place, with his left shoulder resting against her bed, back against her bedside table. For the first time, she noticed that the handles on the bedtable drawers must be digging into his back.

"Isn't that uncomfortable? You should sit against the bed instead."

He gave her a curious smile. "Ah, but that way I wouldn't be able to see your face as easily."

Kagome suddenly realized that, although he had lied and flirted shamelessly in front of them for months, Miroku had always chosen to practice his serious vices away from their little group. She had never seen him drunk before.

He was…different. It was as if the sake had loosened some possibility, some…force in him, unnerving and fascinating at the same time. It was weird. All he was doing was just sitting quietly by her bed as he had so many times before, but she kept finding herself mesmerized by the curve of his neck, the line of his shoulders. As if some waiting withheld energy would become visible if only she looked just a little bit harder. As if by reaching out her hand she could merge that terrible relaxed tension with the trembling field of her own….

Rattled, she asked him about the first thing that came to mind. "Is everything OK? With you and Inuyasha, I mean? You didn't come back during the movie, and I wondered…"

His lips curved slightly and suddenly she wanted very much to touch his mouth. But he glanced at her briefly and away again and said in a reassuring voice, "Everything is fine, Kagome. We were just having a little disagreement. Hardly avoidable when dealing with Inuyasha." When she giggled ruefully at that, he continued, "I had paused to admire the fineness of the night when your grandfather waylaid me. Please forgive me for leaving your company so rudely."

"Oh, that's all right," said Kagome, slightly flustered. "And I guess if you feel guilty then you can consider Grandpa's sake my revenge."

His mouth curved again in that slight smile, and she found herself having to look away, confused.

There was a silence. For the millionth time, Kagome wanted to thank him, for Grandpa and Inuyasha and bringing her through the Well, and she still didn't know how to do it. Tentatively, she tried. "I'm sorry about Sango. Do you miss her very much?" Oh, how stupid. Of course he did.

His answer shocked her. "Sometimes. And sometimes it doesn't seem real, like a figure painted on a scroll you saw one time and can't ever quite remember."

"I thought you loved her!"

"I did love her, Kagome, very much. Such an amazingly _strong_ girl. So very sad. And I wanted to make her laugh. I wanted to--" He stopped, sighed, let his head fall back, staring up at the ceiling. And then rambled on, almost seeming to forget her presence. "But I wonder sometimes if I ever actually _believed _that I would get that chance, that we would be together. Or if she did, either. Looking back now, it seems more like a tale we told one another for comfort than a real romance. A ritual we performed together to keep the night away."

"Oh, Miroku."

He focused his eyes on her again. "I'm sorry if that horrifies you."

"No. I understand." But she didn't, not really. To be so detached. To have so little confidence in, well, in _hope_. Is this how he managed his life of cheerful, easy lies? Her heart wrung. And so she tried again: "It wasn't all pretend, you know. She really was looking forward to having your children--she told me so."

"I don't want any children," he said fiercely, surprising her again.

"Miroku! But you've always said--"

"It doesn't matter. I've been thinking about this." He straightened up, turned his head to look at her fully, drunkenly emphatic. "Fathers should love and protect every child they bring into the world. But how can you love a child of yours and doom it to this, this…void? I won't."

_Oh_.

"Miroku, I'm sure your father loved you."

"Did he? Or did he simply want me to exist so that he could feel as if he was something more than a kazaana?"

Oh gods. "_You_ are more than a kazaana, Miroku."

"Of course," he said, unbelieving.

"You can believe in the future, Miroku. I promise." The promise felt like predestination. She would _see to it_.

For a moment he looked at her with something so strong in his face it might have hurt. Then he gave a short laugh that sounded like a substitute for something else, got to his knees, leaned over the bed, and kissed her.

Kissed her, a long, gentle, desperate reply. Kissed her, eyes closed.

Somehow she couldn't move, didn't want to. After forever and no time at all, "Why does everything have to be so difficult?" he mourned, resting his forehead against hers.

"That wasn't difficult," she said in wonder, raising a hand to stroke his cheek.

He smiled and it looked like a substitute for something else. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"I am going to kiss you again."

"I will forgive you again."

"I know."

His lips, again, were gentle. This time, his eyes were open.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer**: Other people own all of these characters and this world, and they are the ones making all of the money off of them. I'm not even trying to go there.

**Author's Note**: Apologies for such a short installment after such a long wait. To paraphrase Talking Barbie, "Turning points are _hard_." The next chapter is epic, I promise. And almost ready - tune in next week! Really. In the meantime, respectful and grateful thanks to all of you who have read and reviewed. Knowing that you are out there, still interested and waiting for more, is such an honor, and an inspiration to work on this even when life gets busy. Thank you!

**Chapter 7**

Higurashi Yoko stood in the darkened hallway and listened to the conversation inside her daughter's bedroom in a rising fury. How dare that, that…person take advantage of such a vulnerably ill girl? She wanted to storm right in and interrupt these highly inappropriate proceedings immediately.

But she didn't interrupt. A large part of innocence is the ignorance of shame. If she could handle this out of earshot, perhaps some of Kagome's innocence could be preserved.

She had awakened incredulous to the sound of her father-in-law's drunken singing. It hadn't taken long to recognize the voice of his partner in crime. And what kind of an irresponsible…person encouraged an old man to abuse himself with sake like that? Especially _that_ sake. In order to avoid a confrontation in front of the excitable shrine keeper, she had waited until Miroku left his room to check on his condition for herself. Father-in-law was all right; to give him credit, the monk had propped his elderly drinking partner with pillows so that he was sleeping on his side and had left a full glass of water by his bedside. She had been walking quietly back to her own room in the hopes of not waking Kagome when she had heard voices coming from her daughter's bedroom. She had crept closer to listen, mostly curious, not yet entirely alarmed.

But such a conversation! No one had the right to burden a young girl with such a cruel vision of life. Hardly appropriate judgement for a supposed holy man!

Her concern changed to fury when she realized what the sudden pause and the subsequent quiet whispers meant. Then she nearly did charge in to the rescue. Especially when, after a short silence of horrible possibilities, she heard him sigh, Kagome sigh, and the creak of someone's weight shifting on the bed.

But just as she began to step forward to throw open the bedroom door, she was stopped by the monk's deep voice, still speaking softly but in a more ordinary tone. "I think that it's time for you to take your medicine again now, Kagome, if you want me to get it for you."

"Okay, please." Her daughter's voice sounded breathless, a little drugged already. "Thank you."

There was the rattle of pills in the bottle, a clink of glass against the bedtable, the rustle of sheets asthe girlsat up to drink the medicine down. A moment later there was another rustle as she lay down again, and Mrs. Higurashi tensed to fly to the rescue once more.

But instead she heard Kagome sigh sleepily, and the quiet click of the bedside lamp turning off. The monk murmuring a good-night and her daughter's drowsy response.

Then the door quietly opened, and Miroku wandered out of Kagome's bedroom, looking thoughtful and discontented. Stopped dead in the hallway when he saw her, and then looked completely blank. She should hope so. With a silent, furious jerk of her head she indicated that he should follow her downstairs, turned on her heel, and marched on ahead of him. Heard him sigh and follow behind.

Yoko had devoted her life to smoothing things over, to maintaining a household of harmony and peace. But not this time. This time, she found herself consumed with an entirely unfamiliar desire to confront that…person and make him suffer.

It was only for Kagome's sake that she waited until they were safely private in the kitchen to look at him directly, vent her anger out loud. "How dare you?" she cried. "A sick girl who trusts you! How. Dare. You!"

He bowed his head. "I sincerely apologize, Mrs. Higurashi. That was an unforgivable lapse of manners that should never have occurred." He didn't meet her eye, simply continued to look down at his feet as he went on. "Please forgive my thoughtless behavior."

And all of that was perfectly proper and exactly what he should say, but she didn't feel remotely satisfied. Or reassured. She felt betrayed. And stupid. Yoko had never quite understood Kagome and Inuyasha's assumptions that Miroku's morals were not entirely to be trusted. Her unexpected houseguest had seemed like such a reliable young man. At times it had almost seemed as if he belonged here. Darn it, she had actually come to look upon him as an ally in her efforts to keep the peace. And instead, after betraying her trust, and her daughter's trust, and for goodness sake, all of the basic rules of hospitality, he had the nerve to stand there so calmly, so relaxed, making his apologies and awaiting her reply.

That…_bastard_.

He should at least have the grace to look guilty. Not just…tired.

"Do you even have an excuse to offer?" she seethed, still wanting to fight.

He opened his mouth to say something, then sighed. "Not one that matters," he muttered, still not meeting her eyes.

Well, that was hardly adequate answer to her outrage. "Why would you do such a thing at all?" she asked in betrayed astonishment. "What could possess you to so completely violate my trust and hospitality like this? Not to mention Kagome's trust? What could you possibly hope to gain?"

That finally shook him, finally made him jerk his head up to look directly at her. "I don't want to be the expendable sidekick," he snarled, eyes full of anger.

Was that it? Ancestors protect us from competitive young men and their pride. She would _not_ play host to a contest between Miroku and Inuyasha over her daughter. "No one is thinking that you are any such thing," she replied repressively. "But you need to accept that Kagome makes her own choices and that she cares very deeply about Inuyasha." She went on bracingly, warming to her subject. "That does not lessen the enormous favor you have done all of us by bringing Kagome back to this time when she was injured. But it is unworthy and futile to try to come between them because of that." Remembering the conversation in the bedroom, she allowed her voice to soften slightly. "I know that you have lost someone very dear to you. But finding a quick replacement is not the way to ease that pain. Trust me that I know this. Just wait. Give it time."

Miroku stood very still for a moment, face going very blank. "Of course," he said flatly, drawing himself in. "I apologize for such a foolish outburst." He looked down at her calmly again, standing straight and reserved. "And for the insult to your daughter. It was inexcusable. I gather that there are a number of Buddhist monasteries in this city. I will remove to one immediately. When Kagome is ready to resume the search for Naraku, she has only to send word."

And she should just let him go. In fact, why hadn't he done so on his own already? He was smart enough to know that he was never going to be able to go back to his own time even if they did defeat Naraku in this one. At least, not if she understood the nature of the curse correctly. What had be been planning to do, freeload on her family for the rest of his life?

However, there was her daughter's state of mind to consider. "That would be acceptable to me. Unfortunately, Kagome will worry about you if you leave, and I wouldn't do anything to upset her right now in her condition." She paused, then couldn't resist adding, "Couldn't you have done the same?"

The careful reserve was suddenly gone again. "What, upset her with a couple of kisses?" he blurted. "She's probably already forgotten it." And there was a bitter edge to that.

A sudden suspicion, half dismay, half pity, gripped her. "Do you love her?" she asked.

Miroku blinked, looked surprised, as if the question truly had never come up for consideration before. "Love her?" he mused, scratching the back of his neck in a nervous gesture, then letting his hand fall back limp to his side. " A girl like that? She's beautiful, of course. But…Inuyasha's. So… And after all, a girl like that…" He paused a moment, swayinggentlyon his feet, then continued, bewildered. " It's just that, you are _supposed _to show charity and kindness to everyone you meet, but I never thought that anyone actually sincerely did that, until I met her. But Kagome, once she decides…" He was rambling to himself now, not looking at her anymore.

Yoko was a little taken aback by this candid monologue. Could he be drunker than he looked? Her husband had been no more able to hold his liquor than his father could, but she had known boys who…

He was gaining momentum, still talking more to himself than to her. "You know, I don't think she even likes me very much, but there she is every day on the journey, watching out for my safety, worrying for my well being, just because that's what she does for people. Claims them." He peered back at her at last, pleading and earnest. "So how could you…how could you _not_ love a girl like that? How could you not do anything to protect her, no matter--"

Miroku stopped, drew in a surprised breath, eyes focused inward. Repeated softly to himself, in wonder, "Anything."

And then he looked down at her and smiled, with a face suddenly so joyful and serene it stopped her breath.

"I truly apologize Mrs. Higurashi. Please put it out of your mind. You do not need to worry - I will not do anything else to upset or dishonor either Kagome or your family. You have my word on it." A polite bow. That beautiful smile again. "May I say goodnight to you now?"

"Of course," she stuttered, unprepared.

Watched him walk through the kitchen door and away outside and wondered exactly what had just happened.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer**: All of the above.

**Author's Note**: For all of you lovely people who have been faithfully reading and patiently waiting, not the End (two more chapters left), but…well, I'll just let you read…

**Chapter 8**

For the next two days, both the kazaana and Miroku's temper held, as if caught together in the same fragile calm. The hollowed place in his heart filled up with the recognition of love, he had no more trouble making do with the moment. He chatted with Kagome, argued with Inuyasha, helped out around the Shrine, and felt nothing but peace. He even flirted delicately with Kagome's girlfriends, who came to visit their injured schoolmate and stayed to giggle over the cute "cousin" from the country.

Accomplishment? He had carried a girl through a Well. It was enough.

The end came, predictably, at the most inconveniently public moment possible.

They were all in the kitchen sitting down to eat the evening meal. Miroku was picking up his bowl of rice when there was a sudden, audible popping noise. The kazaana must have finally snapped a crucial tendon, because half of his hand instantly went numb. The bowl slipped out of his fingers and crashed to the floor.

As everyone looked at him, startled, he looked down at the broken pottery, and felt all of the waiting moments finally narrow down into this single, sharpened point.

"Miroku, are you all right?"

With a huge effort, he looked up, made eye contact. Smiled. Stood.

Bowed hastily to Mrs. Higurashi. To the shrine keeper. " Thank you for your most generous hospitality. I must apologize for the damage to your dishware. And to the grounds."

And the escalating shivering pain in his hand told him that it was _time to go_, so he turned for the door. Paused just a moment to smile down at Kagome, nod across the table at Inuyasha and Souta. "Goodbye. Thank you, for…. Good luck with Naraku."

They began to question and exclaim, but it was _time_, and so he began to run, out of the door, across the yard, cradling his shattering palm to his chest. Running hard, running for that spot in the front courtyard that he had already picked out as the only space large enough for his grave.

And as he skidded to his knees, panting, halfway between the main shrine gate and the wellhouse, just in time, the beads around his wrist shattered, the glove ripped off into the vortex, and the kazaana leapt free.

It hurt just exactly like Hell. _Don't scream_. He tried to angle his hand upward, to avoid catching the shrine in the path of the wind. And it was tearing at his fingers, ripping. Just this last thing. Just don't scream.

And at that moment, Naraku appeared.

Appeared, _of course_, to gloat over the final reeling in of his family curse. Of the triumph of supernatural malice over human will.

And he should have fucking _known_.

Because this was Naraku without his usual baboon-pelt robe. This was Naraku in fully human form, in a modern business suit. This was the man from the Wacdnald's commercial.

And the stupid bitter irony was that Inuyasha had been right, all of those times that Miroku had collaborated with Kagome to disparage his suspicions. Right all along, because Naraku actually was the CEO of Wacdnald's Japan, and they had known exactly where to find him all of this wasted time.

"Well, Monk, it seems that you have failed after all," that hated, unforgettable voice echoed across the courtyard. "And none of your friends are here to help you. So sad, to die alone. Again." The deep voice turned pensive. "Will you bother to be brave this time, I wonder, with no one here to see?"

Then Miroku did scream, every particle of his being turned to rage, and aimed the Wind Tunnel directly at its maker.

o o o

o o o

Kagome watched Miroku bolt out of the kitchen door and felt momentarily bewildered.

Damage to the grounds? What was he talking-- _No_. Oh no. No, no, no. Not now. Not yet.

Not if she could help it.

"Souta," she cried, "Go upstairs and bring me my bow and arrows. _Fast_."

"Kagome, what are you doing?" asked Inuyasha suspiciously.

"We have to save him, Inuyasha," she cried, beginning to wobble her way towards the kitchen door. "We have to stop the kazaana."

He stopped her by grabbing her arms firmly, but his voice was gentle and his eyes were sad. "No, Kagome. We can't do anything about the curse without Naraku here. Let him go. He wouldn't want to put you in any danger."

"Inuyasha! We can't let him go alone! We can't!"

"No, Kagome--"

"SIT!"

And then she was stumbling free, running, crossing the courtyard, gasping at the pain stabbing at her side. Ignoring the cries of her mother and grandfather. Because she couldn't. Halfway across the yard, Souta caught up with her. "Sis! What are you doing? Come back to the house!"

But she could see the wind beginning to blow, up above the roof on the other side of the shrine, and she couldn't. Snatching the bow and arrow from Souta and throwing her other arm across his shoulder, she gasped, "Help me get there! We have to help." Maybe there would be a way, if she shot a sacred arrow directly into the Wind Tunnel -- oh, why hadn't she ever thought of that before? And Souta did help her, but they were still so slow, and she could see the wind beginning to solidify into a funnel, and some tiles were working free of the roof and--

Inuyasha snatched her up just before they reached the Sacred Tree. "Oh, no," he snarled. "You're not making me the one responsible for abandoning him. No way you're laying that guilt on me!" He bounded on around the corner into the front courtyard with her on his back, and stopped, stunned.

Because Naraku was standing there, in front of the kneeling monk. And Miroku, screaming, was turning the kazaana towards him. And she almost wept with gratitude, because it was not too late, and there was still something that she could _do_.

Inuyasha must have agreed, because he put her down, drew the Tetsusaiga, and leapt around the side of the windstorm towards Naraku.

"Get ready to die, Naraku!" he shouted, releasing the Backlash Wave towards the smirking figure.

But four feet from Naraku the spiraling power crashed into a darkly glowing barrier that suddenly surrounded the demon, and the whirlwinds were deflected to crash into the trees on the courtyard perimeter. And though Miroku still had the kazaana turned full on Naraku, as in the past it was failing to pull him in.

Naraku merely laughed, holding up the almost-complete Shikon Jewel by its chain in front of him. "Fools, nothing you can do will have the power to harm me as long as I am carrying this."

"Then I will just have to take it away from you!" cried Inuyasha, leaping forward, claws outstretched.

"No! Inuyasha! The kazaana will take you if you get any closer!" shouted Miroku. "Get Kagome out of the way now!"

And as Inuyasha paused in dismay, snarling, Kagome tried to steady her wobbling legs, plucked out an arrow, and began to draw her bow.

"You can't have him, Naraku!" she called through the rising wind. "You can't have anybody else, ever! I am stopping you now!"

"Kagome, no! Get back!" cried Miroku.

But she was walking steadily forward, and her aim was steady on the Jewel, and she knew, she _knew _that this arrow, when she let it fly, would strike true.

And then disaster struck.

Naraku gestured. Inuyasha froze in mid-leap. Naraku pointed. The ground beneath Inuyasha's feet opened into a deep, glowing, red chasm, leaving him suspended directly above it in the air.

"Inuyasha!" Kagome shrieked, turning her gaze away from the Jewel. And as she watched in horror and Inuyasha struggled to move or speak against the binding power of the nearly-completed Shikon Jewel, a pair of enormous black vines twisted their way up out of the firey pit, twined themselves around his feet, and began to slowly pull him down into the depths.

"Kagome! Shoot out the vines!" cried Miroku.

But before she could shift her aim towards the pit, Naraku's rolling chuckle echoed over the rising wind. "Yes, Kagome, save Inuyasha," he laughed. "And know that at the moment you fire your arrow at the Hell-plant, I will use the Shikon Jewel to finish opening the kazaana over the monk. Or shoot the Jewel and save the monk, and know that at that moment my power over the vines will weaken and Inuyasha will be pulled into the chasm." He smiled at her with relish. "Choose, Kagome. Miroku goes to the Wind Tunnel or Inuyasha goes to Hell."

Kagome didn't think. She didn't hesitate. She shot.

Her arrow sang across the path of the whirling winds as if they didn't exist, glowing, growing, until with an enormous ringing sound it hit the chain that held the Jewel just below Naraku's fist. The Jewel flew off at an angle, as Naraku's face went blank with astonishment. The demonic vines gave a mighty tug, and with a roar and a burst of flame the portal to Hell snapped closed around Inuyasha's frozen form.

And Naraku, screaming, panicked, unable to fly, unable to change shape, scrambling with untransformed human hands for a handhold and pelted by flying debris, was inexorably pulled across the courtyard and into the widening kazaana.

There was an ear-popping change of pressure, and a sudden silence.

But when she looked desperately over the ruins of the shrine arcade, Kagome could still see Miroku on his knees in the middle of the courtyard, slumped over onto the ground.

She didn't remember running to meet him; she was suddenly just there, kneeling by his side.

And as she pulled on his shoulders, pulled his face up from the ground to find him gasping, looking at her, _alive_, she was filled with the most incredible rage.

"You idiot!" She shouted, shaking him back and forth. "You used it, didn't you? You used it to get me to the Well! How could you risk yourself like that? How could you not tell me! How could you just leave--?"

And he shouted right back. "Are you insane! What did you think you were doing? You could have gotten killed!"

And he tried to grab her shoulders too, but winced, pulling his right hand back to look at it.

"Miroku! Your hand..."

"It hurts," he said, numbly. "I think that it's broken."

"But it's a hand, Miroku! Your whole hand!" She snatched it up gently, holding it so that he would look and understand. "Look, it's perfect," she babbled, smiling, softly tracing the sore, swollen lines with her finger. "Look, you've got a whole palm and everything, and all of the right lines, a heart line, a life line…"

"Life," he said, still numb. "Life." He looked at her in surprise. "I am going to _live_." And he began to laugh, and she began to laugh with him.

And then he began to cry. Tried to stop, turning away from her, starting to apologize. But Kagome, who still blushed at the very thought of being held by a boy, now found herself pulling him back towards her, drawing his head onto her shoulder, just as if she had done it a thousand times before. "It's OK," she said. "Just cry."

And he did cry, great, gasping sobs, on and on, as if making up for a lifetime. And she thought that maybe he was. So she held on tight, her arms around his shoulders, hands smoothing down his back, murmuring over and over. "I have you. It's OK."

And as Kagome held the sobbing young man in her arms, clutched his shaking human shoulders with her simple human hands, she finally began to acknowledge the truth that somewhere inside her she had always already known. That life, and love, were something more complicated than a fairy tale. More difficult. More deep. That heroism was more complicated, and didn't necessarily require a sword.

Eventually, Miroku's sobs quieted, and he sat up, drew himself out of her arms, tried to apologize again. She smiled at him, was about to tell him not to worry about it, when she noticed a rosy glint as he ran his left hand across his eyes in an attempt to wipe away the tears.

"Miroku? What's that in your hand?"

"Oh," he said. "I forgot." Surprise fought with exhaustion in his voice as he looked blankly down at the chain tangled in his fingers. "It's the Jewel. I think I grabbed for it as it came flying by." He looked at her with a dawning astonished triumph. "I seem to have caught it."

"Oh Miroku! You've done it! We've got the entire Shikon Jewel at last - all we have to do is add my shards! Wait 'til we tell Inuyasha--"

"Inuyasha!" he interrupted, looking at her in shocked recollection. "Kagome, you sent Inuyasha to Hell?"

Inuyasha! Realization crashed down with a crushing burden of guilt. What had she done? She couldn't even remember making the choice. "He'll be all right," she tested, trying to reassure herself. "He's a demon. He can survive being in Hell for a little while." She continued more confidently, beginning to feel convinced, "We can figure out a way to get him back, can't we? Now that we have the complete Jewel, it should be totally easy."

"I suppose that's possible," he mused, immediately shifting focus from disaster and redemption to the problem of rescuing their friend in a way that made her chest feel curiously full. "Do you have the other shards with you now? We should get started right away. It's almost the new m--" His gaze strayed to the spot on her breast where he knew the shard bottle should rest under her clothes. Then he looked lower, and suddenly turned pale.

"Kagome, what have you done to yourself?" he cried in horror. She was confused for a moment until she followed his gaze down her side and saw the blood seeping through her shirt. "Oh," she said, suddenly noticing how much she hurt. "Maybe I pulled some stitches?"

But then he was picking her up and running, running towards her family where they were cautiously stepping out from around the corner of the shrine. "Call an ambulance!" he shouted, his voice still hoarse from tears and screaming. "Kagome's injured!"

"No I'm fine," she tried to say, but she was beginning to feel a little odd and it didn't come out very loudly.

"What have you done to her now?" cried her mother, trying to snatch her out of Miroku's arms as Souta ran back to the telephone.

"It's OK, Mom," she tried to make herself heard over Miroku's explanations and grandfather's wailing about the damage to the shrine complex. "I did this to myself, running and stuff."

"What was that windstorm? Where's Inuyasha?" continued her mother, distraught.

"Kagome saved the day, Mrs. Higurashi. Naraku is dead. Inuyasha is…temporarily indisposed," Miroku shorthanded.

To Kagome's astonishment, her mother actually shouted at Miroku, "Didn't you promise me no more?" And to her alarm, the monk bowed his head and began to apologize.

"Wait, Mom, you're not understanding what happened," Kagome tried to fix things through her growing dizziness. And she thought she was managing to explain about the kazaana and Naraku and the Jewel and Inuyasha without getting too jumbled up, because her mother stopped glaring at Miroku and instead held her tight, looking down at her with a face full of love and fear and a sort of astonished resignation.

The ambulance must have been in the neighborhood when Souta called because it arrived just then, and further explanations had to be delayed in the flurry of emergency questions and procedures.

As the paramedics closed in to begin work, Kagome did manage to press the Jewel and the bottle containing her shards into her mother's hands. "Please Mom, take good care of these while I'm in the hospital," she whispered. "We need them to get Inuyasha back." He mother smiled and nodded and stepped back to let the emergency people reach her, and Kagome remembered another urgent concern.

"Help Miroku," she told the paramedics shifting her onto a stretcher. "He's hurt too."

"Don't worry, Miss," we will take care of everything," the older man replied. He must have really been listening to her, because when she was settled in the ambulance with an IV attached to her arm, she found that Miroku was sitting in a fold-out seat on the other side of the van, having his hand looked at by the young woman.

"Miroku!" she called.

"Don't worry, Kagome," he replied, completely misunderstanding her concern. "They are taking good care of you."

And then she couldn't see him through a flurry of activity around her as they encouraged her to tell them how this felt and hold still for this reading, and by the time all of that was done the van fell into a peaceful kind of quiet under the sound of the sirens. When she tried to crane her neck to see Miroku again, the man said to her, "Don't worry, Miss. Your friend is all right. He's just fainted."

The woman chuckled a little at her look of alarm. "Don't worry. Some guys really do faint at the sight of blood."

At once Kagome found herself blazingly angry, opened her mouth to protest hotly. How could she say such a thing about Miroku? They didn't know! They--couldn't possibly believe any proof she had to offer.

So instead of arguing, Kagome lay quietly awake in the ambulance for her second trip to the hospital that month and thought about Inuyasha and Kikyo and Miroku's grandfather, and about Naraku's inability to change shape during the battle, and about karma.


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer**: Ditto.

**Author's Note**: Sorry about the long wait for such a tiny bit of transition. New job, long, long hours. Many, many thanks to all of you who have been patiently sticking with this for months and to those of you who've found the story recently and sent encouraging words -- and not to worry! Large parts of Chapter 10 have been in final form since June, so I'm hoping to get it cleaned up and posted sometime in December.

**Another Author's Note**: If you would like to see what I think Miroku in a drugged sleep looks like, go to page 78 of the Viz English translation of Vol. 11 of Rumiko Takahashi's manga. Something about her spare yet expressive lines made me first understand the dimensionality of this character in a way the anime hadn't. Oh, and Setsubun is an early February festival for banishing evil and celebrating the beginning of spring.

**Chapter 9**

Higurashi Yoko once again sat at Kagome's bedside, once again in a hospital, and didn't know whom to be more furious with, her incautiously loyal daughter or that irresponsible young man from the past. Both of whom were now receiving the best care that the Japanese medical system could provide. Which had been a bit of a job to manage, in Miroku's case. But Grandfather had finally risen to the occasion, producing an elaborate excuse for the monk's lack of proper identification so comprehensively absurd that it could only be believed, immediately. He was back in Administration now, working on the paperwork. Leaving her alone to stare down at this most precious only daughter, and wonder if she was ever going be able to let her out of her sight again.

With a tiny sigh, Kagome stirred, and woke. "Mom?"

Yoko immediately put a smile on her face and leaned over the bed. "I'm here. How are you feeling, my dearest?"

Kagome's eyes focused on her, and she smiled. "OK, I guess." She wiggled experimentally. "My side hurts a little bit. What happened?"

"Nothing serious, thank goodness. You pulled out some of your stitches. They've given you a little fluid and some antibiotics just to be sure, but they aren't too worried. But I am! Kagome, what were you doing today?"

"I told you, Mom. Miroku's kazaana broke, and then Naraku came and he had the Jewel and he froze Inuyasha and I had to choose and -- Mom! Is Miroku all right?"

"He's fine," Yoko said, exasperated by her daughter's poor grasp of priorities. "I'm much more concerned about you. Kagome, how could you be so reckless?"

"I had to, Mom. I couldn't just let Miroku die. And Inuyasha helped me - Oh! We have to get him out of Hell as soon as possible!" Kagome began trying to sit up. "Do you still have the Jewel shards I gave you?"

Yoko caught her by the shoulders, gently helped her to lower back onto the bed. "Shhh, I have them safe here. But I don't understand, Kagome. Did you just say that Inuyasha is in Hell?"

Kagome's eyes dropped, and she looked strangely guilty. "I had to, Mom," she explained, watching her hand smooth back and forth over the edge of her covers. "Naraku made me choose. And Inuyasha's a half-demon -- he can survive being there for a little while." She looked up beseechingly. "But I couldn't let Miroku die-- Are you sure he is all right? Where is he?"

"Yes, he's fine," Yoko repeated, wondering what about this conversation was making her uneasy. "He fainted in the ambulance, so they just added some anesthesia while they operated on his hand. He'll wake up in a couple of hours -- they gave me his room number down the hall." Then it occurred to her that she had completely forgotten why this entire sequence of events should have been impossible. "But the surgeon didn't mention seeing anything like the kazaana. What happened? Is it safe?"

"He's safe, Mom. It's gone. The kazaana disappeared when Naraku died, just like we hoped." Kagome smiled, then looked at her urgently. "So will you go and check on Miroku now, please? To tell him what's going on when he wakes up?"

There had to be limits to how much Kagome worried about everyone but herself. And she had to understand that no one was important enough to make Yoko leave her side again until she was safely home.

If home was ever going to be really safe again. Darn that monk and his supernatural family feud. She could almost even…wish Inuyasha in Hell forever, if it meant that he did not come back to lure her daughter into any more risky adventures. "He'll manage fine without me, Kagome. My place is here with you."

And why should that statement make Kagome so upset? "No, Mom, please," she begged. "He shouldn't have to wake up alone. He can't."

"Kagome, what has gotten into you?" she asked. "Don't you realize that this young man almost killed you today? No to mention the damage to the shrine. He should have taken himself far, far away from us if he knew he was carrying a danger like that," Yoko added, somehow even angrier at Miroku because she could so clearly remember ordering him to remain in the Shrine complex.

"No, Mom. You don't understand. The kazaana wasn't that far along before Naraku… before the hut fell on me. I'm sure of it. I saw Miroku use it, just a few days before, and it was fine. He had months and months to live, Mom, not days. I think he hurt the kazaana getting me to the Well - I think that Naraku put too many demons in the way." Kagome put her hand on Yoko's arm, big eyes pleading. "He traded his life for mine. He traded his life, Mom, and never said a word."

And that … that was… Yoko didn't have any ready mental categories for that. Stared at her daughter, tried to make it fit. "Oh, my dear, I'm sure it wasn't…"

But Kagome was continuing in a meditative voice, with a face caught halfway between wonder and guilt. "He cried so hard, Mom. He cried so hard, afterwards. It must have been horrible, waiting for it to happen, and I never even noticed."

Yoko grasped at the one part of this that she did know how to handle. "It's not your fault Kagome," she reassured. "You were so sick…and he probably didn't want to worry you…"

"He can't go back now, Mom," Kagome interrupted, completely forgetting her normal courtesy in her rush to accept the consequences. "The kazaana might return if he ever goes back to a time when Naraku is alive. He has to stay here now. We have to keep him here with us." Her eyes were wide and determined. "Please, Mom?"

And with a strange sense of relief, Yoko realized that at last she knew exactly what to do. The family had a debt of honor now. How do you repay someone for your daughter's life? "Of course he can stay with us, Kagome. It's the least we can do."

"Oh, thank you, Mom!"

"It's the least we can do," she repeated absently, mind busy with logistical details. They'd have to do something about a permanent ID -- Grandpa's ad hoc excuse might just do on a long-term basis, if they fiddled with the records properly. This was going to be quite a job. 'Thank goodness he already seems to belong here,' whispered a tiny corner of her mind, but she ignored it.

Kagome's was smiling. "So you'll go find Miroku now?"

"In a little while. I want to see you try to go back to sleep first."

"OK." And Kagome did relax back into her bed, allow herself to begin to drift.

Keeping her promise, Mrs. Higurashi kissed her beloved daughter on the cheek and stood up to go.

But as she turned towards the door, Yoko heard Kagome say in a very small voice, "Mama?"

"Yes, dear?"

"I lied."

"About what, Kagome?"

"About thinking that Inuyasha would be able to survive in Hell for a few days."

"Don't you believe that is true?" she worried.

"Oh, yes, I do," said Kagome, still in that very small voice, face turned into her pillow. "I mean that I didn't think about that at the time, when I shot the Jewel. I didn't think about anything at all except that Miroku couldn't die."

Yoko suddenly had the oddest feeling that she was sitting in a great, hushed hall, listening to a master storyteller coming to the end of a very long, long tale. "I see," she said slowly, through that calm.

There was a pause.

"Mama, what should I do?" asked Kagome, head still turned away, in her softest voice yet.

And for a moment past and present seemed to slide together, and Yoko felt as if it was still the day that she and her daughter had first had this conversation, standing beneath the Sacred Tree, puzzling over how to make the heart's choice manifest. "I have a lot of faith in you, Kagome," she said, as always. "I know you are a young woman who will ultimately chose the path that you believe to be right."

"Thanks, Mom," mumbled Kagome, relieved, smiling a little, relaxing back into sleep.

o o o

o o o

A little while later, Yoko was sitting by yet another hospital bedside, looking at the sleeping face of yet another member of her family put there by the quest for the Shikon Jewel. _Family_. Apparently. If Kagome had her way.

_I don't think she even likes me very much_. Well. You are in for a surprise, my boy.

If that was what he was. She wondered how old he was, really. Asleep, he looked so young. Bangs mussed, long eyelashes closed over the pretty eyes. Determined chin, sad, stubborn line of his mouth.

_He traded his life for mine_. _And never said a word_. It was still hard to get her mind around that. She couldn't quite reconcile it with her smiling, morally questionable houseguest.

Except that he _had_ told her what was happening to him. _I don't want to be the expendable sidekick_. Just that once, just a bit too drunk to be careful. And she had not understood. How could she ever apologize?

How could she ever thank him?

Her attention was caught by a change in his breathing, a shifting of cloth as he woke up.

As Yoko watched, Miroku blinked into the hospital half-light, groggy and momentarily confused. Then he smiled a little, and without noticing that she was there, tried to move his arms and legs. He stopped with a little hiss of pain, looking at his right hand. And as he peered at the cast that covered his hand from fingertips to wrist, the contentment drained away from his face and was replaced by doubt. Then fear. Then a kind of horrified and hopeless resignation. And with an ache in her throat Yoko understood why Kagome had been so insistent that Miroku not wake up alone.

She moved her chair loudly. As Miroku turned startled to look at her, she fixed her eyes firmly on the bandaged hand and chirped, "Ah, my dear Monk, you are awake. You will be pleased to hear that the doctors are optimistic about your hand. Every bone was broken, some badly, so it will probably take one or two more operations to completely repair all of the damage, but they are confident you will eventually regain nearly full use." She chatted on cheerfully, still looking at his hand. "They put it in a cast, as you see there. That's a kind of hardened glue and cloth that keeps it immobile while it heals."

Only after a full minute of this chatter did she finally let her eyes wander to his face, found it relieved and tranquil once more. And curious. And then concerned. "Mrs. Higurashi? Is Kagome all right?" asked Miroku.

"She will be fine," she reassured. "Apparently people pull out their stitches all of the time. They've sewn her back up and are keeping her overnight for antibiotics and observation, just in case, but she should be ready to return to home tomorrow."

He smiled in deep relief. "I am glad to hear it. She was crazy to get in Naraku's way like that." He sobered. Looked her in the eye. "Mrs. Higurashi, I am so very sorry that Kagome was endangered on my behalf. I should have had the sense to go as far away as possible long before today."

And somehow that didn't seem so important anymore. "That's quite all right," she said. "Kagome explained everything. She also explained that you cannot go back to the past without reacquiring the kazaana. Since you have no family in this era, we would be honored if you would join ours."

Miroku had clearly been expecting something else. "You do me far too much honor," he stuttered.

"Not enough," she answered. "Kagome also explained that the kazaana broke far ahead of time because you used it to get her to the Well. We can never repay you for making such a sacrifice to save my daughter's life. It was bravely done."

He looked pleased, and then a little bit sheepish. "Not really brave," he admitted. "I was terrified, afterwards, when I realized what I'd done."

"I was talking about afterwards."

"Oh." And he actually blushed. Suddenly she liked him immensely. And decided that it was time she fully committed to this business of acquiring a second son.

"Now," she began briskly, "you are possibly not aware that in modern Japan all births are registered by the government, and this allows us to get proper identification, for health care, and school, and jobs and so forth. Of course, there is no record of your birth in this era, but Grandfather has come up with a solution. He's remembered some distant cousins, recently deceased. There were such eccentric, anti-modernist types that no one will be surprised to learn that they raised a son without ever registering his existence with the authorities. And their reclusive, back-to-the-land lifestyle will account for your unfamiliarity with the modern world. Grandfather has already begun the paperwork, but it would help if we could include as many accurate facts about you as possible. How old are you?" And seeing his blank look, she added, "Minus the five hundred years, of course."

Miroku looked dazed. "Is it Setsubun yet?" he asked.

"It was. While Kagome was in the hospital. Why?"

"Then I'm twenty," he replied.

So young. Good. Not so large a difference as she'd feared, five years. Not important at all, by the time Kagome reached twenty. And in the meantime, Yoko could hope that Miroku would be kept busy enough integrating himself into modern life, catching up on five hundred years of history, technological developments, and social customs, getting a modern education-- Ancestors, what were they going to do about college? He was too old for high school, but much too clever to be allowed out into modern Japan without some formal education to point him in legitimate directions. Perhaps they could… One thing at a time, Yoko! She smiled down at his puzzled face.

"You will have to take the Higurashi name, of course," she explained carefully, "in order to make the story plausible. I apologize that you will have to abandon your own family name."

"I am greatly honored to do so," he said, still dazed.

"As are we." They smiled at one another.

She put on her sternest face. "You must know," she continued, "that by joining the Higurashi family you agree to fulfill certain responsibilities."

"Of course," said Miroku, uneasy. "What would those be?"

Yoko hid her smile. "First, never do anything to reflect badly upon the family honor. Second, you will contribute to the upkeep of the shrine and maintenance of the family household according and to the best of your abilities. And third…" She gave him a very severe stare and he nodded apprehensively. "Third, Higurashis look out for one another. If you are in trouble again, _tell us_. There really can't be any exceptions to this rule -- may I have your word on it?"

Miroku's eyes widened. "I promise," he said, astonished and relieved, and with the beginning edge of happiness.

"Good." And Yoko found herself laughing at the sheer…_everything_ of it all.

"What is funny?" he asked drowsily, starting to give in to the pull of sleep again.

"Oh, I was just thinking," Yoko said lightly, unable to keep the laughter out of her voice. "This is not at all the outcome I imagined when Kagome first climbed back out of that Well, talking about Sacred Jewels and a half-demon named Inuyasha."

Miroku's face changed, struggled a little more awake. "Inuyasha! I can't believe she sent Inuyasha to Hell," he mumbled. "And I'm worried about the new moon -- it's only a few days away and he probably shouldn't still be in Hell when he loses demon form." He turned his head back and forth against the pillow, trying to fight the drowsiness that was beginning to overcome him. "I'm wondering if Grandfather Higurashi has a copy of the Nagasaki Commentaries at the Shrine. If I'm remembering correctly, they make some mention of visits to Hell and--"

She stopped him with a gentle hand on his forehead, smoothing back the disordered bangs. "Not now, my dear Eldest Son. There's nothing you can do until Kagome wakes up tomorrow. There will be plenty of time for the three of you to come up with a solution then. Sleep now. Go to sleep."

And he obeyed her, unconsciously turning his face into her palm. Closed his eyes, sighed, and slept.

She sat by his bedside for a long time more. It was the least she could do.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Inuyasha and neither intend nor expect any profit from this work other than the pleasure of writing and sharing it.

**Author's Note**: Happy New Year! As a 2-year-old I know says when she's ready to get down from her highchair: "All done!" A million heartfelt thank yous to all of you who stuck through this story until the end. This final chapter is dedicated to all of you who read, reviewed, and/or favorited this story, and to everyone who might do so in future. You are the greatest!

**Chapter 10**

Higurashi Miroku, newly reborn, thought that he could get used to this. He was happy, if this pleasantly floating sense of …possibility was what happiness actually was. It was odd how it made him feel so solid. And so light at the same time.

Getting Inuyasha out of Hell had been something of an anticlimax. While Kagome recovered, Miroku and Grandfather Higurashi had indeed found a summons in the Nagasaki Commentaries suitable for calling beings out from Hell and had modified it a bit to fit Inuyasha's particular circumstances. The morning after Kagome returned from the hospital, they all sat in a circle in the courtyard at approximately the same spot where Inuyasha had disappeared. When Kagome took her shards from the bottle around her neck and placed them against Naraku's Jewel fragment, they slid together with a ripple of chimes into a perfect, darkly glowing sphere.

As she cupped the restored Jewel in her purifying hands, the darkness faded into a rosy glow that encompassed their entire little group. At a nod from Miroku, Kagome read the summons into that glow, which spread out into the ground in front of them. After a moment, the earth gave a reluctant grumble, shuddered open, and spit out Inuyasha, who arrived singed, disheveled, and royally pissed off.

"Took you long enough!" he snarled. "Am I the only one who knows how to get anything done _quickly_ in this place?"

At that, Miroku and Kagome looked at one another and began to laugh, because Inuyasha was alive, and clearly not overcome by his demon half, and clearly not irrevocably scarred by his ordeal, and clearly, oh so clearly, himself.

"Well, if my ordeal is so amusing to you…" Inuyasha began, but Kagome cut him off by jumping up, throwing her arms around his neck, and bursting into tears. Which instead left him caught, teeth bared, halfway between an irritated grimace and a satisfied smile.

Miroku noticed that there was a strip of something bloody caught between two of Inuyasha's front teeth, but decided that he didn't want to think about that too closely. As Souta, Mrs. Higurashi, and Grandfather converged with congratulations on the restored half-demon, Miroku double-checked that the hole in the earth had closed itself back up without their doing anything more, and wandered away to find someplace to take a nap.

For the next couple of days, Inuyasha celebrated his release from Hell with a great deal of stomping around and second-guessing. What had they been thinking, to risk using up the power of the restored Shikon Jewel on getting him back? When Kagome pointed out that the power of the Jewel still seemed to be perfectly intact, Inuyasha retorted that it still hadn't been necessary at all. He would have easily fought his way out in a few more days, if they'd just given him the chance.

Finally an exasperated Kagome told him that if he wasn't more grateful, she could just send him back.

Inuyasha replied that _she_ had sent him there in the _first place_.

Miroku just smiled, thinking that Kagome would never entirely understand Inuyasha's need to save face, and drifted off into another nap.

He was napping a lot these days. With the kazaana, Naraku, and the Jewel resolved at last, Miroku found that all he wanted to do was sleep. Futons, floor mats, and sunny corners of the courtyard were becoming his regular haunts. No one seemed to be expecting anything else of him. It was very peaceful.

Sometimes he forgot it was true. The pain in his hand would wake him suddenly, disoriented, old reflexes would take over and he would think it was the kazaana. The Higurashis, Naraku's defeat, the Jewel, all of it, just a complicated dream.

Once, Kagome caught his panicked start into wakefulness, his frightened look at his bandaged hand. He flushed, embarrassed, but she didn't comment. Instead, she said brightly, "Hey! We haven't signed your cast yet. It's a custom, you know–we have to do it." Without asking further permission, she picked up his right hand and firmly drew the characters of her name on the plaster right in the center of his palm. Right where the kazaana had been.

He must not have done a very good job of controlling the expression on his face, because Kagome blushed. But she continued to meet his eyes, shyly and…determined about something. But right then Souta came into the room and pounced on the cast with glee, covering half of it with an elaborate cyborg spaceship design, and the moment passed.

o o o

o o o

On the fourth day after Naraku's defeat, Miroku woke early, full of energy. He kept Souta, Grandfather, and Mrs. Higurashi cheerful company over breakfast until the boy went off to school, then bounded outside to see what he could contribute one-handed to repairing the shambles the kazaana had made of the shrine grounds. He found that even with teams of workmen busy rebuilding the wellhouse and the shrine gate, there was plenty of minor cleaning-up to do.

As he was sweeping twig and bits of broken tile from the front courtyard around midmorning, he noticed Kagome and Inuyasha strolling along the perimeter towards the wellhouse.

Kagome, none the worse for wear from her extra trip to the hospital, was now up and about for short periods. She had progressed to walking slowly around the grounds with Mama or Souta or sometimes Inuyasha at her side.

Today, Inuyasha looked restless. His impatient voice carried quite clearly across the littered gravel.

"I don't understand why I can't just take the Jewel back to the past and kill him then!"

Unrepentantly curious, Miroku drifted closer with his broom.

The conversation must have been going on for some time, because Kagome seemed to be losing her patience. "Because then he wouldn't have been here in the future! Don't you remember the time paradox I explained to you?"

"Keh," Inuyasha conceded. "Well, then what _can_ I do with the Jewel? After all we've gone through to get it, it's stupid to just let it sit there." Miroku wasn't sure that would be such a bad thing at all, but was nevertheless quite pleased that Inuyasha no longer seemed to be considering using the Jewel to become a full demon.

Kagome seemed to be having the same thought, because she smiled proudly at the half-demon. Then cast her eyes down shyly and said so quietly that Miroku had to strain to hear, "Inuyasha, do you ever think you could, you might become human and stay here with…us?"

Inuyasha flushed, looked away, stammered. "Well, I should get back to check on Kikyo…I shouldn't leave her all alone there with Naraku…"

Miroku braced himself for Kagome's inevitable outburst, but it never came. "I see," she said, looking thoughtfully at Inuyasha. Not angry. Not even resigned. Just calm, and …a little relieved?

And as Miroku stood with mouth open and broom stilled, Kagome firmed her jaw, straightened her shoulders, and looked directly up at Inuyasha. "OK, then. When you go back to Kikyo, take the Jewel with you. You have to promise me that as soon as you see her, you will tell her everything that happened in this time. Everything, including there not being any demons around, and Naraku staying in human form, and how we defeated him--_everything_. Then give her the Jewel and tell her that I trust her to make the right wish. _Promise me_."

"Kagome–" 

"Inuyasha. _Promise_."

"All right, all right. I promise."

"Good."

Miroku was so astonished that he had completely forgotten to pretend he wasn't listening. What was Kagome up to?

"At least stay for lunch," she was saying. "We'll make you some ramen, if you'd like."

And all through the rest of the morning and over steaming bowls of noodles at lunch, Miroku stared bemusedly at Kagome and Inuyasha. It _almost_ made sense if he assumed that Kagome was nobly giving up Inuyasha for both their sakes. But if that were the case, why was she so calm? It was extremely odd.

After lunch there was an uncomfortable moment, as everyone wondered what kind of good-byes were in order. Was Inuyasha planning to return? Seemingly in unison, the Higurashis decided to treat this as one of the half-demon's regular departures.

"See ya!" chirped Souta, running off with his Xbox.

"Safe trip, dear," smiled Mrs. Higurashi, patting him affectionately on the shoulder as she left to do the grocery shopping.

And Grandfather began, "Before you go, let me show you an ancient artifact I've just remembered…" At which point Miroku extracted Inuyasha with a smiling excuse and dragged him out into the yard.

They walked towards the wellhouse in silence for a while, neither sure of what to say. Finally Miroku remembered, "Will you say good-bye to Mushin for me, please?"

"I will. Tough luck you have to stay here."

"Not at all. I am coming to like it. And I gather that this time is full of opportunity for a clever man."

"I don't know how you'll do it. I never could."

"I did say a _clever_ man, Inuyasha," he smiled.

"Keh." There was a pause. "Watch over Kagome while I'm gone, all right?"

"Of course."

"And keep your hands off of her."

And since there was still a part of Miroku that was never going to concede any contest to the half-demon, he laughed. "That I will never promise, Inuyasha."

"Of course." And to Miroku's surprise, instead of threatening him with instant dismemberment Inuyasha let out a loud laugh and clapped him companionably on the shoulder.

They reached the wellhouse and turned to see Kagome hurrying towards them from the other side of the shrine. As she approached, panting, Miroku began to drift away to give them privacy, but Kagome unaccountably gestured for him to stay.

It was very quiet in this corner of the courtyard; the workmen rebuilding the wellhouse seemed to still be on their lunch break. The three of them slipped around the construction barrier and picked their way through wood shavings and bits of lumber to stand beside the Well.

With a grunt that Miroku thought was more for show than anything else, Inuyasha heaved open the Well cover. Then turned back to Kagome. Cleared his throat. "So about that Jewel…"

"Oh! Right," said Kagome, taking it from her neck and putting it in the half-demon's cupped palm. "You will keep your promise, won't you, Inuyasha?"

"What do you take me for?" he snapped. "Don't worry about it."

"OK," she smiled at him. Then her mouth trembled, her eyes grew shiny, and she suddenly threw herself into a fierce hug. "Good-bye, Inuyasha," she sniffled into the folds of his red jacket. "Take care of yourself."

Inuyasha blushed, cleared his throat, and carefully extracted himself from Kagome's embrace. "Don't make such a fuss about it! I'll be back to check on you in a few days." And with that he bounded up onto the lip of the Well, paused for a moment to give them both a sharp-toothed grin, and jumped into an upwelling of pink light.

After a few moments, the light faded and Miroku and Kagome stood quietly in the wood-scented gloom. Then Kagome stirred, sighed and turned serious eyes up to his. "Miroku, can you seal the Well, better than Grandpa could?"

Surprised, Miroku answered automatically, "Yes, I think so." Then, careful not to insult his newly adopted grandfather, he added, "Possibly. He's more of a theorist, really."

"Do it, please."

"Kagome, are you sure?" he warned. "Remember Inuyasha's pride. He will only need to find it blocked against him one time for him to never try it again. Perhaps we should leave it open for now. We can always seal it later."

"No. I'm sure. Seal it please, Miroku."

And too astonished to protest further, he did. Afterwards, Kagome stood for a long moment looking thoughtfully down at the charm-studded Well cover, then turned and began to pick her way out of the building. He followed.

As they began the long walk back to the house, he looked at her sideways, trying to understand what had just happened, but not sure if it was really his place to ask.

They were over halfway across the front courtyard when she finally broke the silence. "He probably wouldn't be able to come through the Well anyway, even if we did leave it open."

He frowned in confusion. And then her strange instructions to Inuyasha suddenly made sense. "You believe that Kikyo will wish that all demons be henceforth trapped in human form?" he speculated.

"Well, it's what I would wish, if I were Kikyo, wanting to control the demons and wanting to have a future with Inuyasha. It would explain how the only evil creatures we meet today are human, and why Naraku never changed shape, even in the final battle." She hesitated, then added "And they will have a future now, together, if they want. A human future."

"So the fact that Naraku did not change shape is proof to you that Kikyo wished as you expect her to. And also the reason that you don't expect that Inuyasha will ever find his way through the Well again."

"I guess so."

As Miroku pondered the implications of this, their wanderings brought them to the Sacred Tree. Kagome stopped, stood for a long time looking up into its branches. Finally she sighed.

Miroku's heart hurt for her. "You are thinking of how this is the place you first met, aren't you?" he asked gently.

"No," she surprised him. "Well, partly. I was thinking about this theory I've got about karma, actually."

"Oh? What kind of a theory?"

Suddenly she was blushing and diffident, peeking up at him from under her lashes. And though on the one hand she was completely adorable (how had that idiot ever left her?), on the other hand he was a little worried. When had Kagome ever hesitated to discuss a theory with _him_?

Finally she began, tentative. "Miroku, all of this time I've been looking at this Tree and thinking of Inuyasha and Kikyo and believing that it was my destiny to return to the past and repair the anger and betrayal that Naraku caused between them."

"And that you have done, Kagome, by ensuring that they will both become human."

"Right. But that wasn't my point."

He was genuinely puzzled. "If that's wasn't what you were thinking, what then?"

Another adorable, unaccountable blush. "Um, actually, I was thinking about your grandfather."

"My grandfather?" And Miroku thought that what he felt was confused, but for some reason he couldn't quite identify his heart had begun to beat twice as fast as normal. "Why?"

"Listen, you said that your grandfather first met Naraku because he was coming to consult with the miko who guarded the Shikon Jewel, and when he found her dead he went to examine the half-demon tied to the Tree…"

"Yes, so…?"

"So, um, I've been thinking." Kagome fidgeted for a moment and then continued on with the air of someone plunging into certain danger. "The only reason that Naraku was able to fool Kikyo was that her powers were weakened because she was in love with Inuyasha. What if _that_ was her mistake that I had to come back to fix, not fighting with Inuyasha but _loving_ him?"

"So you are saying that Naraku never would have grown powerful if Kikyo had lived to wield the Jewel?" Miroku mused, avoiding the part about loving Inuyasha with a strange sense of panic. "But Naraku was powerful even before he began to take possession of Jewel shards. He was powerful enough to curse my grandfather, for instance."

"That's exactly it!" Her eyes raised eagerly to his. "He was powerful enough to defeat Kikyo alone, but only by using illusions. And he was powerful enough to defeat your grandfather alone, but also only by using illusions. But what if they had been together? If they had met when he came to consult with her, which would have happened if Inuyasha hadn't shown up first. If, if they had…loved one another, so Naraku could not have tricked them with less, um, _dependable_ lovers? If it was their destiny to meet and fall in love…"

"Then Naraku never would have lasted out his first year, and the Shikon would have remained safe." He thought some more, feeling oddly…shaky? "And you would have never had to come back in time to undo Kikyo's errors."

"Exactly. And…and _you_ would have never had to come here to the future to undo _his_." And Kagome immediately looked at her feet, cheeks coloring again.

His heart was beating wildly now, trying hard to catch up to the logical conclusions his mind was racing to reach. "Kagome, are you trying to say that…?"

She was staring intently at the toes of her shoes. "You probably think I'm being stupid."

"No, not that." Because thinking was pretty completely beyond him at that moment.

"But you still think-- Sango--"

"No! Sango would never-- It's just, _why_?" And he couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voice. "In all these months, you've barely thought enough of me to mention me to your family."

"Well how could I?" she flared. "If I told Mom that I was wandering through the countryside with a lecherous con man, she never would have let me go back through the Well again!"

"But now you think that you _want_ a lecherous con man?"

"No! I mean yes! I mean I want _you_. Kind and brave and smart and generous." Her cheeks a red to rival Inuyasha's coat, she clenched her fists at her side and looked at him in a kind of fury. "Oh, this is so completely embarrassing…"

Miroku couldn't keep his mouth from dropping open. She really saw those things in him? That was…Well, in that case…he had no choice, really.

"I'm sorry," he said, seriously.

Her face dropped, shoulders drooped. "I see. You don't--"

He pulled her carefully into his arms. "I have to kiss you again right now."

Her smile was a sunrise. "I'll forgive you again."

He smiled back at her. Bent his head for a gentle brush of lips. And then she was kissing him back. And then they were pressed close together, holding on, _alive_.

"Well!"

Miroku came up for air to find Kagome's mother standing in front of them, arms full of parcels, glaring. Kagome jumped, and they stepped a bit away from one another. But Miroku kept one arm around the girl, raised his chin a little in defiance, and prepared for the worst.

Mrs. Higurashi glared for a moment. Slowly looked from one to the other for a moment more. Thought. Then: "Absolutely no premarital sex in my house," she dictated. They stared at her in shock. Miroku thought he saw Kagome blush in his peripheral vision but was afraid to look more directly with her mother standing right there.

Mrs. Higurashi looked at her daughter's face thoughtfully for a long moment and amended, "at least until she goes to college. Your word on it, Monk."

"I give my most solemn word," he hastened, throat dry.

"That will do." And with a satisfied little nod, Mrs. Higurashi turned and continued on towards the house.

Stunned by their reprieve, they both stood where they were and watched Mrs. Higurashi walk all the way into the house without moving or saying a word. Then…

"Wow, Miroku," Kagome said half teasing, half…disappointed? "I won't be going to college for at least three more years. How are you going to handle three whole years of celibacy?"

"Celibacy? Hmmm, I don't remember promising that."

"If you dare…! I. Am. Not. Sharing. You. With. Anyone. Deal with it."

"Dealt. But I had no intention of 'sharing,' as you put it."

"Miroku! You are not going to try to break your word to my mother, are you?" She was beginning to get angry. "Or think that I would _ever_ agree…"

And now it really was impossible to keep the grin from spreading completely across his face. "Of course not, my dearest Kagome," he interrupted. "But I distinctly remember that the promise was for no premarital sex _in the house_. This is a big shrine complex. For instance, there's a very cozy little storage room just off the gift shop…if you would allow me to introduce it to you this afternoon–"

"Pervert! As if!"

And his heart felt so solid, and so light. And so safely home.

"No? Hmmm, I think I will have to work on changing your mind about that." He stepped a little closer and hazarded a quick nibble along the edge of her right earlobe.

"Well, not yet…," she amended, squirming but smiling.

Was it disloyal to Sango to be so happy that this girl didn't automatically hit him every time he touched her? "Yet? That sounds promising," he murmured into her neck, sliding his unbandaged hand down the curve of her hip. "Can you be a bit more specific about the precise timetable you have in mind?"

"You…" she giggled, took his wandering hand firmly in hers, and began to walk them slowly back towards the house. "Stop rushing. We have time."

"So we do," he agreed softly, wondering, happy.

Fingers entwined, they walked close together through the courtyard in companionable silence.

"Do you think that Wacdnald's will suffer business reversals now that Naraku is dead?" asked Miroku.

The End.

And the Beginning…


End file.
